Metaphysical Art
Term applied to the work of Giorgio De Chirico and Carlo Carrà
before and during World War I and thereafter to the works produced by
the Italian artists who grouped around them. Pittura Metafisica was
characterized by a recognizable iconography: a fictive space was created
in the painting, modelled on illusionistic one-point perspective but
deliberately subverted. In de Chirico’s paintings this established
disturbingly deep city squares, bordered by receding arcades and distant
brick walls; or claustrophobic interiors, with steeply rising floors.
Within these spaces classical statues and, most typically, metaphysical
mannequins (derived from tailors’ dummies) provided a featureless and
expressionless, surrogate human presence. Balls, coloured toys and
unidentifiable solids, plaster moulds, geometrical instruments, military
regalia and small realistic paintings were juxtaposed on exterior
platforms or in crowded interiors and, particularly in Carrà’s work,
included alongside the mannequins. In the best paintings these elements
were combined to give a disconcerting image of reality and to capture
the disquieting nature of the everyday.
The thinking behind this approach derived from the
melancholic personalities of de Chirico and his brother, the writer and
composer Alberto Savinio. It was encouraged by their reading (c.
1910) of the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur
Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger. They became interested in Nietzche’s
notion of the eternal return and the circularity of time, which
supported their own views about the re-enactment of myth. Their central
concern was true reality (where the past recurs), which is hidden behind
the reality of appearances and visible only to the ‘clearsighted’ at
enigmatic moments. In his paintings de Chirico sought to unmask reality
and reveal its mysterious truth. The modification of perspective and
depiction of mundane objects provided the appropriate context.
In Paris (1911–15), de Chirico and Savinio became
close friends of Guillaume Apollinaire , finding parallels to their
understanding of Nietzsche in his conviction that the unifying element
in contemporary painting was the idea of ‘surprise’, suggesting the
inevitability of fate. It was Apollinaire who first called de Chirico’s
painting ‘metaphysical’, referring to works produced in 1910 and 1911 (L’Intransigeant,
30 Oct 1913). De Chirico had been influenced by the work of the
Symbolists and by that of Arnold Böcklin. By 1917, in Ferrara, he was
painting in a simplified manner, in which crisp areas of colour outlined
in black and a clear, dry modelling complement the disturbing
subject-matter.
Carrà met de Chirico and Savinio for the first time
in Ferrara in February 1917. A leading Futurist, Carrà had begun to
withdraw from the movement in 1915 as he became interested in the
combination of simplicity and monumentality in the work of Giotto and
Paolo Uccello. Paring away superfluous detail in his paintings, he
applied the structural lessons of these masters to figures and ordinary
objects, attempting to reconcile art and nature. His understanding of
Giotto’s use of a perspective subservient to the pictorial structure
prepared him for the destabilizing space used by de Chirico. Carrà’s
style fluctuated during these investigations, but in the metaphysical
style of de Chirico he found a solution. The two painters worked closely
for some months in 1917; while theoretical differences remained, their
stylistic solution became known as Pittura Metafisica, a term that they
were happy to apply to their work.
The Roman periodical Valori plastici appeared
for the first time in November 1918 and became the proponent of Arte
Metafisica, which had widened its activities in the preceding year.
Savinio’s first book, Hermaphrodito, was published in 1918; Carrà
held a show in Milan (1917–18), which included his Ferrarese works. De
Chirico exhibited in Rome in 1918 (with Carrà) and 1919. During World
War I the artists in Ferrara had been in touch with the periodical La raccolta in nearby Bologna. Through this connection Giorgio Morandi absorbed the metaphysical style; for a time c.
1918/19 his works came close to Carrà’s, in the crisp rendering of a
limited group of objects. Morandi’s work was illustrated in Valori plastici, and he exhibited with de Chirico and Carrà but soon passed on to other considerations.
In 1919 Carrà published Pittura Metafisica;
the book understated de Chirico’s importance in these developments and
led to acrimony. A year later Filippo de Pisis, who had been part of the
Ferrara group, published his lyrical prose collection about Ferrara, La città dalle 100 meraviglie.
Although collages survive from 1916, de Pisis began to paint seriously
only in 1919, using a soft impressionistic style for his vaguely
metaphysical still-lifes. At this time the sculptor Arturo Martini,
although dispensing with the characteristic perspective and mannequins,
went some way towards reconciling Carrà’s Giottesque monumentality with
the foreboding of de Chirico’s paintings by means of his small, clay
figures. Martini’s use of the figure was symptomatic of Valori plastici’s
sympathy towards the so-called post-war ‘rappel à l’ordre’. In its
years of publication (1918–21), when the theoretical background of Arte
Metafisica was being clarified by Savinio, de Chirico and Carrà, the
style of both painters shifted radically from the position of 1917 to
concentrate on the figure.
Several major artists were attracted by this
development: Mario Sironi’s totemic mannequins turned into brooding
solitary figures; and Felice Casorati used steep perspectives leading to
dark interiors as the settings for his models. In Germany the impact of
the two Valori plastici travelling exhibitions (1921 and 1924)
was considerable. Featureless mannequins began to appear in the work of
George Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter and Oskar Schlemmer. The effect was felt
most profoundly, however, by Max Ernst. On his arrival in Paris in
1922, Ernst’s painting reflected the admiration of his poet friends for
de Chirico. At that time only one painter, Pierre Roy (a pre-war friend
of de Chirico), showed the influence of metaphysical art, but the
painters who became Surrealists after Ernst almost all passed through a
period of stylistic debt to de Chirico, notably Salvador Dalí and
Alberto Giacometti (the leading creators of the Surrealist Object), René
Magritte and Paul Delvaux.
These groups—Novecento Italiano in Italy, Magic Realism in Germany and international Surrealism—carried
the style into the 1930s. Although Carrà occasionally painted
metaphysical works, it was only in the paintings of Savinio and de
Chirico that the philosophical background of Pittura Metafisica
persisted.
Giorgio de Chirico
Life and works
After studying art in Athens, mainly under the guidance of the influential Greek painter Georgios Roilos, and Florence, De Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he read the writings of the philosophers Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Otto Weininger and studied the works of Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger.
He returned to Italy in the summer of 1909 and spent six months in Milan. At the beginning of 1910, he moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series, The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, after the revelation he felt in Piazza Santa Croce. He also painted The Enigma of the Oracle while in Florence. In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' of Turin:
the architecture of its archways and piazzas. It was the city of
Nietzsche. De Chirico moved to Paris in July 1911, where he joined his
brother Andrea. Through his brother he met Pierre Laprade, a member of the jury at the Salon d'Automne, where he exhibited three of his works Enigma of the Oracle, Enigma of an Afternoon and Self-Portrait. During 1913 he exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’Automne, his work was noticed by Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, he also sold his first painting, The Red Tower. In 1914, through Guillaume Apollinaire, he met the art dealer Paul Guillaume, with whom he signed a contract for his artistic output.At the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to Italy. Upon his arrival in May 1915, he enlisted in the Italian army, but he was considered unfit for work and assigned to the hospital at Ferrara. He continued to paint, and in 1918, he transferred to Rome. From 1918 his work was exhibited extensively in Europe.
De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures.
In autumn, 1919, De Chirico published an article in Valori Plastici entitled "The Return of Craftsmanship", in which he advocated a return to traditional methods and iconography. This article heralded an abrupt change in his artistic orientation, as he adopted a classicizing manner inspired by such old masters as Raphael and Signorelli, and became an outspoken opponent of modern art.
De Chirico met and married his first wife, the Russian Ballerina Raissa Gurievich in 1924, and together they moved to Paris. In 1928 he held his first exhibition in New York City and shortly afterwards, London. He wrote essays on art and other subjects, and in 1929 published a novel entitled Hebdomeros, the Metaphysician.
In 1930, De Chirico met his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer Far, a Russian, with whom he would remain for the rest of his life. Together they moved to Italy in 1932, finally settling in Rome in 1944
- in 1948 he bought a house near the Spanish Steps which is now a museum dedicated to his work.
In 1939, he adopted a neo-Baroque style influenced by Rubens. De Chirico's later paintings never received the same critical praise as did those from his metaphysical period. He resented this, as he thought his later work was better and more mature. He nevertheless produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work. He also denounced many paintings attributed to him in public and private collections as forgeries.
He remained extremely prolific even as he approached his 90th year. In 1974 he was elected to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts. He died in Rome on November 20, 1978.
His brother, Andrea de Chirico, who became famous as Alberto Savinio, was also a writer and a painter.
Legacy
De Chirico won praise for his work almost immediately from writer Guillaume Apollinaire, who helped to introduce his work to the later Surrealists.
Yves Tanguy
wrote how one day in 1922 he saw one of De Chirico's paintings in an
art dealer's window, and was so impressed by it he resolved on the spot
to become an artist — although he had never even held a brush. Other
artists who acknowledged De Chirico's influence include Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio Morandi, Carlo Carrà, René Magritte, and Philip Guston. De Chirico strongly influenced the Surrealist movement.'That de Chirico was a poet, and a great one, is not in dispute. He could condense voluminous feeling through metaphor and association. One can try to dissect these magical nodes of experience, yet not find what makes them cohere... Early de Chiricos are full of such effects. Et quid amabo nisi quod aenigma est? ("What shall I love if not the enigma?")—this question, inscribed by the young artist on his self-portrait in 1911, is their subtext.'(In this, he resembles his more representational American contemporary, Edward Hopper: their pictures' low sunlight, their deep and often irrational shadows, their empty walkways and portentous silences creating an enigmatic visual poetry.)
The visual style of Valerio Zurlini's film The Desert of the Tartars (1976) was influenced by De Chirico's work. Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian film director, also claimed to be influenced by De Chirico. Some comparison can be made to the long takes in Antonioni's films from the 1960s, in which the camera continues to linger on desolate cityscapes populated by a few distant figures, or none at all, in the absence of the film's protagonists.
Modern photographer Duane Michals was also influenced by De Chirico.
Writers who have apreciated De Chirico include John Ashbery, who has called Hebdomeros "probably...the finest [major work of Surrealist fiction]." Several of Sylvia Plath's poems are influenced by De Chirico. In his book Blizzard of One Mark Strand included a poetic diptych called "Two de Chiricos:" "The Philosopher's Conquest" and "The Disquieting Muses."
Fumito Ueda's critically acclaimed PlayStation 2 game Ico (and also its sequel, Shadow of the Colossus, in a less direct way) was strongly influenced by De Chirico. Ico features children wandering though huge, ancient and otherwise uninhabited buildings, are predominately yellow and green in colour and use music only for cut-scenes, enhancing the feeling of space and sparseness. The box art for Ico used in Japan and Europe is particularly imitative of De Chirico's Melancholy and Mystery of a Street and The Nostalgia of the Infinite (both 1914).
