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I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.

Alberto Giacometti

The more you fail, the more you succeed. It is only when everything is lost and – instead of giving up – you go on, that you experience the momentary prospect of some slight progress. Suddenly you have the feeling – be it an illusion or not – that something new has opened up.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Experience Failure Feeling Give Up Lost Moments Open Progress Success Yourself
It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Close Different Impossible Myself See
All the art of the past rises up before me, the art of all ages and all civilizations, everything becomes simultaneous, as if space had replaced time. Memories of works of art blend with affective memories, with my work, with my whole life.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Civilization Life Memories Myself Past Replacement Rise Space Work
Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Failure Friendship Myself Success Worst
It was always disappointing to see that what I could really master in terms of form boiled down to so little.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Disappoint Master Myself See
I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Myself Reason Work
What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Happiness Impossible Myself Work
That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Impossible Oneself Picture Terrible Work
I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality… to protect myself.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Myself Paint Protection Reality Sculpture
The form is always the measure of the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Form Measurement Obsession
I see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary. So long as I’ve learned something about why.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

End Failure Learning Myself See Try
I’ve been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Myself Time Understand
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Intensity Object Reality Reproduction
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Alone Finding Growth Myself Old
I don’t know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don’t identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Age Contradict Identify Myself Remain
In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Building Burning Choice Myself Save
Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won’t know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Artistic Children Creation Discover Myself Success
In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Cat Choice Dangerous Myself Save
Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Honesty Prostitution Sex Woman
If we master a bit of drawing, everything else is possible.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Master Possible Potential
The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Body Head Life Play Possible Skull
Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Chair Copy Interest Myself Reality
In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art Himself Measurement Obsession Subject Work
The one thing that fills me with enthusiasm is to try, despite everything, to get nearer to those visions that seem so hard to express.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Enthusiasm Expression Hard Oneself Vision
When I make my drawings… the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Appearance Darkness Drawing Man Myself Path
Art is the residue of vision.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art One Liner Residue Vision
If only someone else could paint what I see, it would be marvellous, because then I wouldnt have to paint at all.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Marvelous Myself Paint See

I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.

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I don’t know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can’t do what I want to do.

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