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An Immaterial Drawing in Space: Alberto Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m. (1933)

October 22, 2017 by Fosco Lucarelli 2 Comments

A 1933 sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m. relates to “a period of six months passed in the presence of a woman who, concentrating all life in herself, transported my every moment into a state of enchantment. We constructed a fantastical palace in the night—a very fragile palace of matches. At the least false movement a whole section would collapse. We always began it again.”

The surrealist work created with spindly wood scaffolding, sheets of glass and small skeletons, came thus from the relationship with a woman, named Denise. The haunting skeleton of a building is a stage set for isolated forms and figures, the position and identity of which he affirmed not to know much, apart from “the red object in front of the board; I identify it with myself.” As for the spinal column or the skeletal bird, they were probably associated with the woman.

Being a surrealist in this phase of his artistic career, Giacometti published a statement in the same year, referring directly to works like The Palace at 4 A.M. “For many years I have executed only sculptures that have presented themselves to my mind entirely completed. I have limited myself to reproducing them in space without changing anything, without asking myself what they could mean…. The attempts to which I have sometimes given way, of conscious realization of a picture or even a sculpture, have always failed.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related:

Jon Kessler, The Palace at 4 a.m.

Via: Art from the Future

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Comments

  1. Bernard says

    October 24, 2017 at 2:59 am

    Sometimes it increases the perception of a piece to be able to follow how it was conceived.
    Your post makes “the palace at 4 am” richer to me and to your readers, grazie!

Trackbacks

  1. Fausto Melotti, Weightless Constructions (1960’s – 1980’s). – SOCKS says:
    October 8, 2018 at 8:03 pm

    […] and sheeting, and echoed Giacometti’s surrealism of “Palace at 4 a.m.” (see in Socks: “An Immaterial Drawing in Space“) as well as Calder’s “Circus”. Among the sculptures composed between the 1960’s and […]

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