Portrait of Isaku Yanaihara
Alberto Giacometti
ALBERTO GIACOMETTI, 1956. OIL ON CANVAS.
“I am not attempting likeness”, said Giacometti, “but resemblance”. After being interviewed Isaku Yanaihara, treating him as confidant and muse for the near decade that followed. He made over a dozen oil portraits and one sculpture of Yanaihara, and this is the second in his enduring series. The figure seems to appear as an apparition, ghostlike in the powerful glow that surrounds him. His body and face appear in allusions, confident brushstrokes that reveal little of detail but huge amounts of essence. In his sculptural work, Giacometti was a revolutionary who reinterpreted the human form into something otherworldly yet recognisable and the same quality appears in his paintings. Yanaihara is unrecognisable as an individual figure here, but a spirit of the man seems to shine through the canvas. His physicality disappears into thick oil paint leaving only the truth of his personality behind.