A Sympathetic if Incomplete Portrait of Alberto Giacometti

In a new biography by Michael Peppiatt, 20th-century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti gets the rock star treatment. The cover of Giacometti in Paris is comprised almost entirely of the artist’s craggy and pitted face, as timeless and veristic as a Roman bust, and as eminently cool as Keith Richard. It’s a solid choice, telegraphing that what’s inside will be more about the man, his aura and his appeal, than about his art. But the image, taken by photographer Franz Hubmann, does reflect something essential in Giacometti’s work itself: its uncanny ability to capture the energy of ancient art in a modern format.

From the book’s opening pages, the reader is in good hands with Peppiatt, a British writer and art historian who has spent much of his career in Paris. It opens in the 1960s with a charming account of a young Peppiatt visiting the painter Francis Bacon — whom he met while interviewing him for a student publication — to say goodbye before he heads to Paris for work. Bacon insists that his young friend must meet Giacometti: “The thing is there’s something terribly sympathetic about him. And he knows absolutely everyone in Paris.” It’s a promise to the reader that Peppiatt’s subject is a congenial one, his life intersecting with some of the most influential figures of 20th-century Paris.