Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time (Exhibition and Exhibition Catalogue)
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 186152811
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
- Open access status
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- Month
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- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Alberto Giacometti: A line through time was a research project comprising an exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA (2016) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2019), and an accompanying publication. The research questions were:
• How significant was the impact of Giacometti’s work on a generation of British artists in the wake of WWII?
• What were the connections between Giacometti and artists such as Lucian Freud, Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull. Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Isobel Rawsthorne?
• What new light can the Sainsbury Centre’s extensive collections, including the largest holdings in the UK of works by Giacometti, shed the above questions and his interest in ancient art and cultures?
For the first time, through evidence-based research, Giacometti’s impact on British Art was explored in depth. The project uncovered and interrogated important archival material documenting Giacometti’s patronage by Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, including several unpublished letters.
The exhibition and book explored Giacometti’s representation of the human figure from a number of perspectives including the revaluation of figurative art in relation to the emerging philosophical atmosphere of Existentialism and Phenomenology. Key to this was the essay on Giacometti by Jean Paul Sartre published in 1948. The project aimed to assert the importance of these figurative tendencies in contrast to previous research focusing on the emergence of Abstract Expressionism. The exhibition demonstrated Giacometti’s fascination with the ancient Cycladic, Etruscan, Egyptian and West African cultures by juxtaposing his work with examples from the Sainsbury Centre’s collection.
The critically acclaimed exhibition and accompanying book reconfigured our understanding of Giacometti within the context of British Art. The project’s findings were disseminated through public engagement programmes, as well as the exhibition and publication.
Evidence of the originality, significance and rigour of the research, and the modes of dissemination can be found in the portfolio.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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