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Such is the power of the work Giacometti produced after his breakthrough in 1946, that it has almost completely overshadowed his earlier, quite accomplished and numerous, Surrealist efforts. But such is the brilliance of The Palace at 4 A. M., that despite its markedly "un-Giacometti-like" appearance, it remains both well known and admired. Indeed, it is not only one of the greatest Surrealist sculptures, but one of the most intriguing sculptures of the Twentieth-century. Set on a polished wooden base about two-feet wide and one-foot deep, the piece resembles a tiny stage setting. Thin wooden dowels and lengths of wire trace the outline of a building, dominated by a central tower. The interior is occupied by several enigmatic figures. To the left, a female form stands before three vertical panels. In the center, a vague object, at once phallic and vaginal, hangs on a wall, with a small pane of glass suspended horizontally before it. To the right, the skeleton of a large bird is hung within what could be an upper window, and a spinal chord hangs in a cage set on the floor below. The overall effect is chilling yet tranquil-halfway between nightmare and reverie. Technically, the piece combines several aspects of Giacometti's previous Surrealist work. The piece's airy spaciousness could be seen in such open, cage-like works as Man (1929) and Suspended Ball (1930-31). Its morbidity was presaged by the startling Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932). Moreover, Giacometti had already executed pieces-such as Hand Caught by a Finger (1932)--that existed outside of the standard repertoire of sculptural forms (i.e. bust, statue, relief). But The Palace at 4 A. M. was much more than a technical achievement. In a remarkable prose piece in the December 1933 issue of the surrealist journal Minotaur (a translation of which is in Peter Seltz' book, Alberto Giacometti-see Bibliography), Giacometti offers an exegesis of the personal iconography that guided his construction of The Palace. He reveals that the piece recounts a period in his life, during which he spent each night with a particular woman (biographers believe the woman was named Denise, one of Giacometti's lovers during the 1920s about whom little is known) building and re-building fragile castles of match sticks. Furthermore, the female figure is the artist's mother and the ambiguous form in the center is the artist himself. Giacometti confesses that the purpose of the spinal column is a mystery even to him, but that the skeletal bird represents a vision Denise had on the night before the relationship ended. These details are rendered in the Minotaur piece in a dreamy, poetic cadence, and rather than detracting from the sculpture's aura of mystery, actually add to its mystique. It is almost as if, in The Palace at 4 A. M., Giacometti had devised a form of autobiography of the psyche.
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