F IGURES 5
AND
6
These drawings are done after studying Giacometti’s geometric portraits and heads from between 1920 and 1937. Neither drawing addresses the iris of the eye, lending them the same curiously blind gaze one finds in archaic Greek sculpture. Notice in both the darker line weight, which in figure 5 (above) begins to define a center axis (often present in Giacometti), while in figure 6 (right) it makes the eyeless gaze emphatic. Each drawing treats the mass of hair as flat negative space, but a light line discovers the contour of the skull beneath the mop of hair in figure 6. Although accounting only for the head and neck, each drawing achieves a gestural quality by careful observation of the poise of the head on the column of the neck. In figure 5, there is a slight tilt of the chin upward, the gaze blankly peering up rather than out; the neck in figure 6 twists as the head turns to gaze blindly at the viewer.
69