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The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

Alberto Giacometti

The human face is as strange to me as a countenance, which, the more one looks at it, the more it closes itself off and escapes by the steps of unknown stairways.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Escape Face Human Oneself Strange Unknown
Taste for things of the past evolves, doesn’t it? What was a masterpiece a hundred years ago is no longer so today.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Evolution Ourselves Past Pieces Taste
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
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
In a fire, between a Rembrandt and a cat, I would save the cat.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Animal Cat Choice Dangerous Myself Save
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
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
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 see a head from a great distance, it ceases to be a sphere and becomes an extreme confusion falling down into the abyss.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Confusion Distance Greatness Head Myself
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
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
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
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
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
Art is the residue of vision.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Art One Liner Residue Vision
If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should I use any other color?
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Color Myself Reproduction See
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
If we master a bit of drawing, everything else is possible.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Drawing Master Possible Potential
When one lives with problems of importance, the prostitute is ideal. You pay, and whether or not you fail is of no importance. She doesn’t care.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Care Failure Importance Live Problem Prostitution Yourself
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
The form is always the measure of the obsession.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Form Measurement Obsession
Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Honesty Prostitution Sex Woman
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
All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Equality Failure Image Myself Success Willing
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
Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to rediscover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me (often without my knowing it).
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Discover Image Known Myself Object Transformation
In the past I have never thought about loneliness when working, and I don’t think about it now. Yet there must be a reason for the fact that so many people talk about it.
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI

Fact Myself Past People Talk Thinking

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

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The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

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