A DE CHIRICO STILL LIFE
by Joan K. Yanni
MAG has only one work by Georgio de Chirico, but it is an unusual one. Florentine Still Life (64.47) is one of the few still lifes that the artist painted, and it combines an unsettling surrealism with a classical arrangement.
The picture is balanced, with still life elements framed by a curtain on the left and an adjacent building on the right. A glass of wine surrounded by apples, bananas and leaves seems to be resting on a creased cloth draped over a wide marble windowsill. Through the window a bright blue sky, and luminous white clouds light up a nearby building.
But looking closely, one can see some peculiar elements. The fruit at the front of the painting seems over ripe, a contrast to the fresh, clear sky. The leaves in the picture are strangely lighted; the light is coming from behind, through the window, yet it shines on the foreground of the painting, leaving the area nearest the window dark. And just where is the glass of wine resting? It is precariously tilted, standing above the other elements in the painting and silhouetted against the sky. These are enigmatic elements characteristic of the artist’s work.
Giorgio de Chirico (jor-joe dā-kee-ree-ko) was born in Greece in 1888, the son of a Sicilian railway engineer. He studied in Athens and Munich before moving to Italy. By 1910 he was living in Florence, where he began painting a unique series of dramatic, dreamlike landscapes in which unseen objects cast long, sinister and illogical shadows onto empty city spaces—all set against bright, clear background light reminiscent of the light of southern Italy. Moving to Paris, he soon gained the admiration of Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, with his ambiguous, ominous scenes of deserted piazzas with classical statues, dark arcades, and small, isolated figures threatened by oppressive architecture. Apollinaire declared him "the most astonishing painter of the younger generation."
After a period of inactivity due to illness, de Chirico began to paint new works in which locomotives often appeared, or were suggested by smoke. These were followed by a “tower series,” which peaked in the astounding Nostalgia of the Infinite, in which a giant, mysterious structure towers threateningly over two tiny, silhouetted figures. Next came a group of works juxtaposing classical statuary with out-of-scale familiar objects such as huge artichokes and giant fruits. He also continued to paint his earlier dreamlike, ominous cityscapes.
After 1914 de Chirico embarked on a series of paintings in which inanimate objects seemed to take on a sinister, spectral character. He also began to paint his famous mannequins—armless tailor’s dummies with smooth, featureless faces that sometimes bore the symbols of infinity in place of eyes. Often the mannequins held ancient temples in their laps. When World War I began, de Chirico returned to Italy in 1915 and was mobilized into the army. Soon his health broke down, and he was sent to a convalescent hospital near Ferrara, where he painted what is now called his “metaphysical interiors,” rooms filled with engineers’ drawing instruments, maps, and, strangely, huge replicas of the rolls and biscuits he saw in the Jewish bakeries in Ferrara.
Carlo Carrà, the Italian Futurist painter, was a patient at the same hospital and the two became friends. Together they founded the magazine Pittura metafisica (Metaphysical Painting). The two eventually went their separate ways, but several of their metaphysical paintings attracted the attention of future Surrealists such as Max Ernst and René Margritte.
Surrealism in art, in which imagery is based on fantasy and the world of dreams, grew out of a French literary movement founded during the 1920s. The term “surrealist” had been coined by Apollinaire in 1917, but the artistic movement came into being only after the French poet André Breton published the first surrealistic manifesto, Manifeste du surrealismé in 1924. Breton was an admirer of Sigmund Freud and his concept of the subconscious. Surrealism became one of the leading influences of the 20th century, eventually including painters such as Yves Tangy, Jean Arp, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Marcel Decamp, Salvador Dali and Alberto Giacometti.
De Chirico had his first postwar show in Rome in 1919. It was a failure, with only one painting, a nonmetaphysical work, sold. Soon after, his painting began to change. He turned to copying Old Masters in the museums. An academic quality began to appear in his pictures, and his subjects became myths and legends. Ironically, just at the time that his early paintings were being hailed by Breton and the Surrealists, his work was in the process of losing the qualities of enigma that had made him a proto-Surrealist.
Breton encouraged the first exhibition of Surrealist paintings in Paris in 1925. De Chirico, who had returned to Paris and was welcomed by the Surrealists, took part in the exhibit, along with Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Man Ray. But when the Surrealists urged him to return to his pre-war style, he angrily refused to do so. Increasingly bitter relations resulted. The Surrealists attacked him, and he, in turn, denounced the entire field of modern art, including his own previous work
De Chirico returned to Italy where he continued to paint uninspired pictures. He also designed theatrical costumes and scenery. He died in 1978. Although he painted throughout his life, his finest works were produced before 1925. He is considered one of the outstanding Italian painters of the century.
No comments:
Post a Comment