Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, and the Man
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Sculpture
Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, and the Man Details
About the Author Laurie Wilson, professor emerita of art therapy at New York University, is an independent art historian and faculty member at the New York University Psychoanalytic Institute. Read more
Reviews
The author is an 'art historian and psychoanalyst.' That should make you suspicious immediately. Wilson ignores what Giacometti said about his work and his life and posits absurd Freudian mumbo-jumbo to explain this complex man of genius. For example, Giacometti told biographer James Lord that he did not have homosexual desires. Indeed, Lord (an openly gay man himself)found no evidence whatsoever that Giacometti was not hetrosexual. But Wilson manufactures absurd reasons to insist that he was, in line with Freudian doctrine: Freudians insist, of course, that someone like Giacometti (or you or me) does not really know himself -- only the analyst can uncover the unconscious drives behind our every thought and move. What is amazing is not that a small group of psychoanalysts survives, but that the Viennese quack's nonsense is believed at all today.As another reviewer pointed out, Wilson's leaps of logic (illogic, really) make her case -- and her book -- ridiculous. There are fine books on Giacometti out there -- Lord's biography is a good starting point -- read those instead.