Photo © Tate (Sam Day)
Gonzalez-Torres presents a tender study of transience, loss and eternal renewal in this minimalist light installation
A pool of light emanates from a pair of unadorned household light bulbs hanging from entangled extension cords. Despite the close nestling of the two bulbs, they are not directly connected to one another. If one burns out, it is replaced. Arranged in this intimate yet informal manner, the installation gestures towards the tender but transitory nature of personal relationships.
“Untitled” (March 5th) #2 stands as a quietly powerful testament to the resilience of queer love. The work is often interpreted as a memorial to Gonzalez-Torres’s late partner, Ross Laycock. Gonzalez-Torres has commented: ‘When I first made those two light bulbs, I was in a total state of fear about losing my dialogue with Ross, of being just one.’ Laycock died from an AIDS-related illness the year of the work’s creation, and his birthday is part of the title.
Gonzalez-Torres chose to cite Laycock’s birthday rather than naming him outright. The artist always maintained that his artworks are open-ended and receptive to the individual perspective of the viewer. He said: ‘I want my artwork to look like something else, non-artistic yet beautifully simple... I’m always shifting. There is also a lot of power and threat in that.’
At once highly personal and universal, minimal yet profound, layers of emotional meaning reverberate through “Untitled” (March 5th) #2 as the bulbs cast their light and shadows against the walls of the gallery.
Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing 1947
Giacometti has said of the making of Man Pointing: ‘I did that piece in one night between midnight and nine the next morning. That is, I’d already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again because the men from the foundry were coming to take it away. And when they got here, the plaster was still wet.’ Highlighting the figure’s theatrical pointing gesture and its skeleton-like form, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) described the sculpture as ‘always halfway between nothingness and being’.
Gallery label, March 2025
1/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Woman of Venice IX 1956
In the 1940s, Giacometti began to make tall, elongated figures with roughly defined outlines. These works appear to represent the human figure seen from a distance. The artist explained that when he made large figures, they seemed ‘false’. It was only when he portrayed them as ‘long and slender’ that they truly reflected his vision of humanity. Woman of Venice IX was the last of a group of standing figures of women that Giacometti made for the French Pavilion of the 1956 Venice Biennale.
Gallery label, March 2025
2/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Bust of Diego 1955
From the mid-1950s, Giacometti concentrated on portraiture. He repeatedly drew and sculpted his immediate circle of friends and family. His brother Diego, who sat for this bust, was one of Giacometti’s most frequent models and often assisted the artist in the studio.
Gallery label, March 2025
3/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Standing Woman c.1958–9, cast released by the artist 1964
During the late 1950s, Giacometti made a number of fragmentary figures with their arms partly or entirely missing. Their slender forms appear vivid yet fragile. The writer Jean Genet (1910–1986) commented: 'The resemblance of his figures to each other seems to me to represent that precious point at which human beings are confronted with the most irreducible fact: the loneliness of being exactly equivalent to all others.'
Gallery label, March 2025
4/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Woman with a Broken Shoulder c.1958–9, cast released by the artist 1964
During the late 1950s, Giacometti made a number of fragmentary figures with their arms partly or entirely missing. Their slender forms appear vivid yet fragile. The writer Jean Genet (1910–1986) commented: 'The resemblance of his figures to each other seems to me to represent that precious point at which human beings are confronted with the most irreducible fact: the loneliness of being exactly equivalent to all others.'
Gallery label, March 2025
5/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Bust of Annette IV 1962, cast 1965
This work is one of eight busts that Giacometti made of his wife Annette between 1962 and 1965. Although Annette was one of his most frequent sitters, Giacometti approached her anew each time she posed. The artist worked heavily on the surfaces of the sculptures. He commented that ‘after three days of working she doesn’t resemble herself anymore’.
Gallery label, March 2025
6/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Bust of a Man (known as Chiavenna I) 1964
This portrait of Giacometti's brother Diego was made from memory. In his later years, Giacometti was interested in the eyes of his subjects. Many of the portrait busts from this period have a penetrating and intense gaze. 'If I can hold the look in the eyes, everything else follows', Giacometti explained. In the title, Chiavenna refers to the small Italian town where the sculpture was cast, just across the border from Giacometti’s hometown of Borgonovo, Switzerland.
Gallery label, March 2025
7/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Hour of the Traces 1932
Delicate forms balance on this sculpture’s cage-like structure. The shapes are mysterious and their connections unclear, as if in a dream. The lower suspended form could be a beating heart or a stopped clock’s pendulum. Giacometti said that when making sculptures during this period he reproduced images that were ‘complete in my mind’s eye... without stopping to ask myself what they might mean’.
Gallery label, March 2025
8/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Four Figurines on a Stand 1950–1965, cast c.1965–6
Giacometti based this sculpture on a memory of seeing four sex workers across a room from him in Paris several years before. ‘The distance which separated us, the polished floor, seemed insurmountable in spite of my desire to cross it', the artist recalled. The small scale of the figures and the sloping sides of the sculpture’s base recreate the strange sense of distance experienced by the artist. Giacometti made several versions of this work, including a destroyed version created in the basement of the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in 1965.
Gallery label, March 2025
9/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Standing Woman c.1958–9, cast released by the artist 1964
During the late 1950s, Giacometti made a number of fragmentary figures with their arms partly or entirely missing. Their slender forms appear vivid yet fragile. The writer Jean Genet (1910–1986) commented: 'The resemblance of his figures to each other seems to me to represent that precious point at which human beings are confronted with the most irreducible fact: the loneliness of being exactly equivalent to all others.'
Gallery label, March 2025
10/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Alberto Giacometti, Tall Figure II 1948–9
Giacometti said that his figures reflect his own experience of looking at people. Concerned with truly representing this, he often reworked his sculptures over long periods before casting them in bronze. He would build up and strip down the clay model several times, gradually eroding its outline and reducing the work to its essential core. Giacometti’s fragile, elongated figures have often been interpreted as a reflection of the precariousness of life after the Second World War.
Gallery label, March 2025
11/11
artworks in Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Art in this room
Alberto Giacometti
Man Pointing
1947
Alberto Giacometti
Woman of Venice IX
1956
Alberto Giacometti
Bust of Diego
1955
Alberto Giacometti
Standing Woman
c.1958–9, cast released by the artist 1964
Alberto Giacometti
Woman with a Broken Shoulder
c.1958–9, cast released by the artist 1964
Alberto Giacometti
Bust of Annette IV
1962, cast 1965
You've viewed 6/11 artworks
You've viewed 11/11 artworks