Ways of being

Exhibitions 2: L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti: Collection de la Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti

In terms of body shape, the week of the Rugby World Cup final was an odd choice for the Pompidou Centre to kick off a new exhibition of Alberto Giacometti, an artist whose attenuated vision of humanity seems better suited to Paris Fashion Week. In fact, those looking to apportion blame for size 0 models might well start with his spindly figures with platform-soled feet.

In post-war Paris, Giacometti was himself something of a style icon. With his austerely sensuous face, rumpled tweed suits and ever-burning cigarette, he embodied existentialist cool. The camera loved him. Famous photographers — Brassaï, Penn, Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, Karsh — beat a path to his door, and pictures of the artist in his Paris studio were splashed across magazines under tabloid headlines like ‘The Torment of Alberto Giacometti: although museums vie for his sculptures…he considers all his work a failure.’