The Rumpus has short article by Julie Greicius about her favorite book by biographer James Lord who recently passed away.  His book, A Giacometti Portrait, chronicles the effort by Alberto Giacometti to paint a portrait of Mr. Lord.  The work goes on for days with the artist constantly destroying the previous day’s work and starting over.

Here’s a quote from her article:

Lord exposed how much destruction was necessary—at least for Giacometti—to the process of creation. He also captured the complexity of the relationship between artist and subject.