From the Great Sphinx of Giza to the Streets of Paris: Alberto Giacometti and "Die Katze, Le Chat, The Cat"

Nestled above the entrance sign to the Sammlung Sharf-Gerstenberg collection in West Berlin, sitting high on a shelf, is a prolific work of sculpture surely looked over by many in the museum’s grandiose and overwhelming collection of Paul Klee watercolors, Max Ernst’s thickly framed surrealist landscapes, and the rich, brutal brushstrokes of Jean Debuffet. This sculpture is Alberto Giacometti’s “The Cat,” immediately recognizable by its slender figure and rough edges, indicative of the artists’ tendency to manipulate the forms he represented. Gaunt, texturized, and surreal, “The Cat” watches over the museum attendees from above with the same scrutiny as a security camera, emulating the royal spirit of the Great Sphinx of Giza. 

"The Cat" by Alberto Giacometti

Coming from a highly artistic family, Giacometti attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts, and moved to Paris at twenty-one years old. Alongside his contemporaries, composed of names such as Marx Ernst and Joan Miró, Giacometti became a leading surrealist sculptor in the French avant-garde. After World War II, he began creating his signature figures: tall, lanky, and eroded subjects, primarily modeled after his wife, Annette, but inspired by the underbelly of Parisian life. William Barnett, scholar and author of “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy,” drew connections to Giacometti’s work and the emergence of cultural and industrial modernism in his book. Due to an increasingly industrializing and capitalistic society, one in which meaning becomes increasingly devoid in the mainstream, Giacometti’s sculptures reflected the zeitgeist of emptiness through the use of minimal material. He shaved down the essence of ideas and subjects to thin, seemingly fragile bronze works, very small for their respective scales. And of the thousands of works made in his career, “The Cat” was one of two sculptures modeled after animals. 

Sculptures by Alberto Giacometti, Guggenheim

Giacometti was fascinated by cats, and once said that “in a burning building, I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.” He is quoted voicing his admiration towards the sacrality of cats in ancient Egyptian culture, as well as Picasso’s affinity for the feral cats commonly found on the streets of Paris. Inspired by his brother Diego’s cat, “The Cat” is an interesting representation of Giacometti’s attitude towards not just the animal, but what they represent on a larger level in the context of his body of work. For example, Giacometti also said, “A cat is narrow and can pass through two very close objects.” The dexterity, length, and slenderness of a cat’s figure was emblematic of what he wanted to achieve while sculpting human figures and their essence. 

The impact of Giacometti’s sculptures on the surrealist canon is that he cast the dream-like and transcendent figures into tangible objects, as opposed to painting them. In the three-dimensionality of his work, these menacing, slender figures become a part of our reality, a mirror into what we could be, and we react to them as such. “The Cat” is no different from this idea, yet because of its nature as a domestic creature as opposed to a human being, it elicits a different response: we are not viewing ourselves in his work anymore, but rather the creatures that slink through our streets or curl up with us at home. We are reminded of their elusivity, their delicacy, and their prowess. But more than that, we are reminded of our relationship with them; as companions, as custodians, and as creatures. 

Alberto Giacometti and his sculptures