ALBERTO GIACOMETTI AND PETER LINDBERGH, MUSEU DA MISERICÓRDIA, PORTO
On the other side of the River Douro, Seizing the Invisible at Museu da Misericórdia (MMIPO) is a sumptuous exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Alberto Giacometti with Peter Lindbergh photographs, a visit I cannot recommend highly enough.
Giacometti was born in Switzerland, in 1901, eight years before Bacon was born in Dublin, making the two artists more or less contemporaries. While Bacon made a number of extensive stays in Paris, Giacometti spent most of his adult life there. For a few years in the early 1960s, they overlapped in
Paris and became friends until Giacometti’s death in 1966.
The two artists were obsessed by the expressive possibilities of the human head and figure. Like Bacon, Giacometti worked with his long-suffering friends as models and, like Bacon, constantly raising the bar, Giacometti discarded much of his work. In A Giacometti Portrait, the American writer James Lord recounts the intense experience of sitting for Giacometti on 18 consecutive days. Every evening, the artist would appear to have attained perfection, with Lord unable to imagine how his portrait could possibly be improved. The following morning, on his model’s arrival at the studio, Giacometti, ever dissatisfied with his work, would announce he had destroyed the previous day’s production. With Giacometti lighting up a cigarette, the gruelling sitting would begin all over again.
On a different spectrum, German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh was instrumental in creating the supermodels of the 1990s, the “faces which launched a thousand perfumes”. Although far from insensitive to plastic beauty, Lindbergh was equally concerned to portray each model’s personality. Much of his finest work was done in black and white, which he considered ‘kinder’ to the model and more sensitive to her character.
One of Lindbergh’s final projects was to photograph Giacometti’s work in the archives of the Fondation Giacometti, in Paris. The exhibition at the MMIPO establishes an
extraordinary intimate dialogue between Giacometti’s original sculptures in bronze and Lindbergh’s perception of those sculptures, seen through the lens of his camera and produced as large-format photographic prints.
Seizing the Invisible will be showing until September 24 and is sponsored by Taylor’s Port, who offer a glass of port to be enjoyed on the roof terrace of the MMIPO, gazing out across Porto. Adrian Bridge, CEO of Taylor’s, explained the brand plans to host annual exhibitions of international art in Porto, in addition to permanent displays in the World of Wine’s various museums, all affiliated to Taylor’s.
www.mmipo.pt