11. Spoon Woman is conventionally assigned to 1926 except in Hohl's monograph where, for reasons not argued, it is dated 1927. In following Hohl's dating, I am proposing the greater stylistic maturity, accomplishment, and thus later date of Spoon Woman, precisely on the basis of Giacometti's developing relationship to primitive sources. The Couple, on the other hand, seems to me to participate in the stylizations à la nègre that were widespread by the early 1920s. The sketches published, for example, by Léger in L'Esprit Nouveau, no. 18 (1924) as "personnages" for La Création du monde, manifest the same generalized overall shapes (trapezoidal, oval) for the body-as-a-whole, and use the same types of ornamental detail for the indications of anatomy. Sculptors like Miklos and Lambert-Rucki, within the context of Art Deco, were producing stylized "African" masks and figurative sculptures by 1925. The designer Pierre Legrain was producing elegant furniture for clients such as Jacques Doucet, modeled directly on seats and stools from tribal Africa. These were widely published during the period, cf; Art et Décoration I (1924), 182. It is this stylizing attitude toward the primitive source that The Couple participates in but Spoon Woman renounces.

12. Previous attempts to assign a tribal, sculptural source for the female half of The Couple seem unconvincing on the basis of conceptual and morphological comparison. Maurer suggests a Mahongwe reliquary figure, Cowling proposes Makonde body shields (see Maurer, p. 316, and Elizabeth Nesbitt Cowling, "The Primitive Sources of Surrealism," unpublished M. A. thesis London, the Courthault Institute, 1970, p. 46). But however unpersuasive the specific "source" might be, the suggestions put forward by these authors attest to their experience of the Africanizing character of the figures in The Couple. This quality makes suggestions of a Neolithic source for the work, put forward by other scholars, somewhat dubious. There is a strong compositional (but not conceptual) resemblance between the female figure of The Couple and one of the menhir figures from St. Sernan sur Rance, a work that figures in the illustrations of the Carnac Museum catalogue of 1927. This connection was first suggested by Stephanie Poley ("Alberto Giacomettis Umsetzung Archaischer Gestaltungsformen in Seinem Werk Zwischen 1925 und 1935," Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen 22 [1977], 177) and later by Alan Wilkenson (Gauguin to Moore, Primitivism in Modern Sculpture, Art Gallery of Toronto, 1981, p. 222). There are other examples of the effect of prehistoric images and objects on Giacometti's work, most obviously in the 1931 sculpture The Caress in which the splayed hand etched onto the surface mimics the "stencilled" palm prints of the caves. Interest in this detail from prehistoric painting is to be found everywhere in the 1920s, one famous example of which is the cover of Ozenfant's Foundations of Modern Art (1931). But in The Couple the prehistoric image, if it indeed functioned as a suggestion for the composition, has been converted into an evident style nègre.

13. The Dan source was first suggested by Jean Laude, La Peinture française (1905-1914) et l'art nègre, Paris Klincksieck, 1968, p. 13.

14. The Exposition de l'art indigène des colonies d'Afrique d d'Océanie, Musée des Arts Décoratifs (November 1923-January 27, 1924) was organized by André Level. Among the collections drawn upon for the exhibition were those of Félix Fénéon, André Lhote, Patrick-Henry Bruce, Paul Guillaume, and of course the Trocadéro. Guillaume contributed 79 objects, of which six were spoons listed as "Côte d'Ivoire." Jean-Louis Paudrat believes that these must have included Dan objects. Two other spoon/women that Giacometti could have seen were: the Lega spoon in Carl Einstein, La Sculpture africaine, Paris, Editions Cres, 1922, plate 42; and the utensil illustrated in plate 3 of Paul Guillaume and Thomas Munro, Primitive Negro Sculpture, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1926. The French edition of this book appeared in 1929.

15. See the copy Giacometti made of the Venus von Laussel, published in Luigi Carluccio, A Sketchbook of Interpretive Drawings, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1968, plate 2. It is difficult to date these drawings. but this page also contains the sketch-idea for Giacometti's Trois personnages dehors of 1929.

16. Georges Henri Rivière, "Archéologismes," Cahiers d'art, no. 7 (1926), 177.

17. Christian Zervos, "Notes sur la sculpture contemporaine," Cahiers d'art, no. 10 (1929), 465.

18. Guillaume and Munro, Primitive Negro Sculpture.

19. Roger Fry, "Negro Sculpture," Vision and Design, New York, Brentano's, 1920.

20. As one of many examples of the aestheticizing discourse that analyzed primitive art as just one moment of the collective representation of Art-in-general, and thus of the aesthetic impulse common to all humanity, see A. Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art: The Ice Age to 1931, London 1931 (French publication, 1928).

21. G. H. Luquet, L'Art primitif, Paris, Gaston Doin, 1930. For Bataille's review, see "L'Art primitif," Documents, II, no. 7 (1930) 389-97. Collected in Georges Bataille, Oeuvres Complètes Paris, Gallimard, 1970, vol. I, pp. 247-254.