The problem of vision for Giacometti was to find the style which would most amply and truly embody it. That is the problem, of course, of all art, and it is the cruelest problem of all, for it tests the personal resources of the artist beyond the limit of his capacity. The expression of truth is an effect of style, and that pitiless fact only increases the difficulty of the search for a true style.
– photograph by Dong Wensheng, Meditating Head Sculpture from the Tranquilizing Room series
Alberto knew this. He once observed: “The truer a work of art is, the more it has style. Which is strange, because style is not the truth of appearances, and yet the heads which I find most like those of the people one sees in the street are the least realistic heads, the heads of Egyptian, Chinese, or archaic Greek sculpture. For me, the greatest inventiveness leads to the greatest likeness.”
– James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1997, p. 166
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