Giacometti, Yanaihara Isaku.

Yanaihara Isaku was 38 years old at the beginning of his stay in Paris. A recommendation of Jean Wahl had allowed him to get a scholarship from CNRS. In his homeland, he taught philosophy at the University of Osaka; he wrote and meditated about Rouault, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Camus which he translated The Myth of Sisyphus . After the parenthesis of a trip to Greece and Italy, he had agreed to pose for the artist he met at an exhibition for autumn 1955. This decision  transformed his life. Immediate consequence, she brought him to extend his stay in France: Alberto had always need new work days to specify what the disconcerted and frightened from his friend's face. "Your face ... I see everything tiny and terribly huge ... I must paint the two together. " Yanaihara had planned to leave for a trip to Egypt before joining Japan. His departure was constantly postponed: Giacometti desperate to complete the portraits he had, he did not stop to destroy and scrape the surface of the paintings he was beginning. In this work, it was "to draw my face as he saw it ... grab a whole that can not be reduced to an aggregate details" .

 Throughout this period of companionship, Giacometti was from the expression of Jean Genet, another great witness of this time, "a man who never mistaken but lost all the time." Alberto persisted, he repeated that "the real work began today." the story of the Japanese philosopher is remarkably sober. Capture the moments, very bright joys, warm friendship and then almost immediately, confusion, tension, anger and disasters are never evaded. Events overlap and repetition, the artist and his model remain attentive, affectionate and courteous toward one another. They face working conditions that are often relentlessly hopeless: one is at the heart of a dead end or a terrible trampling. "Your face is made ​​of a multitude of razor blades turned to me It's impossible. draw "..." You terrorize me. " However, as written Yanaihara, there never, " there is no room for boredom, " despair moments do not prevent requirement of dialogue, returns incredibly soft . His narration is exciting from beginning to end, we tirelessly grasps the inevitable reasons why these two men could only postpone and later they had engaged .   Carving, painting and drawing were to Giacometti was his comment, "a kind of war" . Sometimes he would scream bluntly or during a time of extreme fragility, bursting into tears. Into depression in the beginnings of life, or when occurred real happiness of expression, Giacometti retains a beautifully poise. Yanaihara remembers: "Tignasse curly, soft look, worker hand shuffling - how what is seen so clearly could it disappear?" . Gaëtan Picon believed that " anyone who met him one day could have seen essentially."The photographs, memories and stories, everything indicates that his conversation and his attitudes were unforgettable: "I have the courage today that I always missed. " this man who loved cross Samuel Beckett could be wonderfully funny: Yanaihara recalls that " every young Alberto was already dreaming of following in the footsteps of Chaplin. " Few observers have specifically analyzed the impact of this work Yanaihara company. It happened that Giacometti perceive this experience as a disaster, it had the feeling of being back in 1925, a time during which it seemed impossible to draw a head. In the texts and manuals devoted to Giacometti, the evocation of this episode often cut short. Quickly explains this terrible aporia, it is for example the case with Yves Bonnefoy, or in the often contested biography of James Lord (ed. Nile, 1997). A major impediment would have impeded this relationship Yanaihara was elusive, approach a person from a distant culture fundamentally engendered insurmountable obstacles. This experience was not purely negative, it genuine progress genera: "the reality is best seen when the work progresses, it takes on new forms completely unknown" . Giacometti, as recalled by the afterword of this book had the courage and conviction to repeat that "we will continue our work, our reciprocal portraits and we will go a little further endless" . For its part, following the death of Alberto, Yanaihara felt very strongly that these "days spent in his company still upset me with this urgency that can not mere memories." All kinds of real details, and equally eloquent gaps are delivered us into this collection. We find each afternoon all season, Alberto Giacometti seated at the bar-tobacco Didot street, swallowing as a meal two boiled eggs and a glass of wine. He's always with him an armful of newspapers he does not fail to read, he talks about the plight of Hungarian Budapest or the Suez crisis, he is eager to know what Sartre say about Soviet intervention. He scribbled a drawing on a napkin, stared at a partner observes with great attention "the construction of its head" .To characterize the vacuum of his time, the near impossibility of representation that is satisfactory, he says on page 117 that in terms of painting "one would need a radical revolution in the order of that which replaced in the art of war bows and arrows with guns. " We meet Olivier Larronde and his companion, or Jean Genet, the only friend to whom Giacometti never closes the door of his studio, even though he is in a crucial moment of his work.Genet likes the attitude of Yanaihara he admires its permanent availability with respect to the painter: "I understand your passion, I have experienced here too" . As for the lack of this account, a deaf Diego disapproval or the presence of a fourth person who came in November 1958 with Carolina instead - "my grayness," said Alberto- near Annette will grow significantly, are not mentioned.   But here and there, repeatedly, without warning, turning a transcription Yanaihara, the irreplaceable and unconditional, that from what a life is changed, we come . Page 56, emerges on the canvas a disarming appearance of the Japanese face: "He was pessimistic, was the" very bad ", yet my portrait deployed a huge unknown space until then, taking a step back I saw him come off with the striking force of a Buddha statue. Up close, the picture of Giacometti, offered only a minor accumulation of gray lines, I did not understand what they represented, but as soon as I walked away from ten steps, a huge face this monumental character, which was at the same time my face, then arose, with unexpected power, nothing hidden under the surface ... this face has a fullness and weight. at the same time the lightness. There is nothing heavier and at the same time lighter than a head. heavy as a mountain and slightly floating in the air like a boat. " in the final pages, this confidence Alberto Giacomett i: "There is no way to endure the death of a loved one ... what for me is to be a living? For me it is not something other than see his face, to hear his voice ... Even in death, he remains alive for me since I see his face, I hear his voice ... I consoled myself as I ' I could. " Meanwhile, after the death of Alberto, Yanaihara sees the remaining years of his life  :" My biggest job now will, I believe, to support this void. " [Alain Paire] Yanaihara Isaku, with Giacometti,editions Allia, Veronique Perrin translation (about his work as a translator, this link Brainstorm net).