Sometimes when I walk through the CMA’s galleries, I see someone with a sketchbook drawing a sculpture. What is lost — and what is gained — as they translate its three dimensions into two, moving the work from pedestal to paper? I’ve also spent a lot of time drawing in museums, to appreciate and understand art. Like myself and my fellow museum sketchers, Alberto Giacometti drew from great artworks to learn and to work through his own ideas. Though an avid museumgoer, Giacometti based most of his sketches of African arts on photographic reproductions in books linked to the entangled networks of colonialism, ethnographic museums, and the discipline of anthropology. By using photographs — rather than actual artworks — as his main source material, Giacometti performed artistic and theoretical translations of African arts.
Map of Tokyo Galleries and Museums
Traverse the streets of New York or Paris and you’ll notice galleries appear about as often as dogs — at least a few every…