Giacometti was a perfectionist. He tormented himself with his attention to detail and his desire to make every piece be as realistic and life like as he possibly could. As a result of Giacometti’s determination, out of all of the paintings he has done, he never considered one a finished piece of work. He shows his struggle in all of his paintings by isolating a certain area, that one area he would work on for as long as it took him for him to determine it be perfect. Sometimes he would destroy a painting he was working on for months, to begin over again and let his struggle last for the rest of his life. By doing that it shows his true determination and passion for painting and capturing his pieces to be as true to life as possible.
Giacometti’s main concern in the still life “Apple on a Sideboard”(1937) was seemingly to depict an apple and its surroundings. To get this effect he used highlights to enhance the apple’s isolation and to draw the spec
tator into that isolation. The isolation of the apple metaphorically reflects how Giacometti always seems to concentrate obsessively on just one aspect of his paintings. One can see in the apple his repeated but failed attempts to reproduce the real, efforts that are usually reserved for drawing the heads of his subjects in his portraiture.
Giacometti not only had trouble focusing on more than one model in his paintings, but he also had trouble finishing more than one aspect of those paintings as well. He would obsessively paint and repaint one section of a painting until he could not sit straight anymore because of his bad back. He then would go back the next day and go through the same pain staking process until he just gave up. He put himself through such torture because of his obsession with perception and the contemplation of reality.
The figures in Giacometti’s portraits always seem to be on the verge of dissolving into areas around them, their edges
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