What you look at is what you will see.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species. -Nietzsche

Georgio de Chirico is the founder of what was recognized as metaphysical art.  This period occurred right in the middle of World War I and drew heavily from philosophers such as Nietzsche, quoted above, and Schopenhauer both of whom are known for their ideas concerning God and man’s place in the world.

Understandably these are not new philosophies but have been studied for many centuries and indeed include the very questions which have driven man from his earliest consciousness. What is man? Where do we come from? What is our place? How do we function? The war brought on a new perspective because of it’s huge impact on the entire world. Questions of good and evil were set apart by the greater question of man’s morality. Is man inherently evil?

As a follower of such ideas and perhaps seeking his own answers, De Chirico painted his interpretations of the world via that perspective

Not only a painter, De Chirico was a military conscript, and worked in a hospital in Italy.His was a well rounded and intense education as well. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and met many artists now famous for their contributions to movements such as modernism, surrealism and dada. But De Chirico traveled from one group to the next and found no place of his own among them despite his avid following.

Prior to 1918 he produced many very famous works which appear to reflect his deep and sincere concern for man.

This is The Seer, created by De Chirico and now showcased at MoMA. It portrays a man with no eye (and indeed no face) who has before him an easil with a perspectively perfect representation of his surroundings which are noticeably askew. Perhaps my favorite piece of De Chirico’s pre 1918 works, it is both serene and confounding. Shadows and light conflict in the real world, colors clash, and the lines are so perfectly drawn that their very perfection causees a sense of disfunction within the painting. And yet the draft before him is precise despite what it represents. De Chirico shows the difference between reality and what man wants or wishes were true. He shows us that we are the seers, the future is in our hands and that what we wish to be reality is far more clean than our crude existance permits. We are both animal and mystic.

Another image, portrayed in similar style, as much of his work is done, is The Two Sisters:

This work was also done in 1915 and shows a similar pair of maniquins as was portrayed in The Seer, this portrait differs in that there are multiple figures which De Chirico uses to make a remark concerning the common ideas which engulfed the ideas of race and human origin which were also being explored during this time. Despite differing atributes, De Chirico suggests that they are sisters as the title states and portrays them with the same faces which are incapable of expressing more than the barest of emotions. A tilt of the head here or a slightly turned face are the only things which suggest connection between the two. And yet they are also seperated by the wooden board which is physically between the two. This may be a mere suggestion of separation but it may also represent a piece of ship which was used to carry slaves and represents the much more human imposed seperation than anything physically different.

In 1919, De Chirico shifted his focus and with it his art began to change.  He published his article, “The Return to the Craft” following a breakdown during the war. He began to focus on Italian painters and classical styles.

Canzone Miridionale is an example of how his art began to transition.

His lines are softer, more impressionistic, his form is more carefully wrought and yet still there is no face. The body gives the expression as previously, gently hinting. For without our faces what are we but the sum of our pieces? De Chirico is exploring color and true light but has not entirely left behind what impact the war had on his philosophies. These pieces do not carry the ‘umph’ his previous did and appear to some extent childish. A man relearning an art must begin again from the start.

But let it not be thought that De Chirico fell into mediocrity as a man without a strong wind at his back may. His work may not have had the same message it previously did but progress and evolution have no purpose for good or ill. They simply continue as life itself does. Day by day changes shape us, effect us, and bring us into new understandings.

From here De Chirico began producing works which gradually began to resemble the more classical styles with which we are so familiar. In many early attempts at still life and portraiture, the stilted feeling and emotionlessness which were portrayed in his early works still seep in. However in these his more naturalistic portrayals are sure sign of change. Though more impressionistic than classical the first, Donna bionda di spalle, 1930, is clearly a beautiful work which gives the hint that De Chirico had found a piece concerning mankind. We are paradoxical. Knowing brutality, De Chirico found a way past his experiences to see that there is good to be found and represented it by way of beauty.

The second, The Swimming Naiads, 1955, shows his truly classical composition:

He never truly acquired the clean lines of the most classical, retaining the softness he had gained through transition, but De Chirico mastered a more natural feel and the comparisons with his earlier work suggest that his ability to see the world from multiple perspectives had not lessened as his works changed but had grown past the classification of one style.  It was said once, and I know not by whom, that you will continue learning so long as you believe you need to. Life offers ample opportunity for mistakes but it also has a tendency to allow a chance to learn from those mistakes and the mistakes of our peers (as well as their successes). For De Chirico, or rather for us, his avid viewers, his art is a visual journal of  what changes occur over a lifetime and how they are influenced by events which are greater than any one man. We may not be in control of the world around us, but we are certainly in control of how we respond.

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Sources:

Harrison, Charles; WoodPaul. Art in Theory, 1900-2000.Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated. 2002.

http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Chirico.html

http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/juju/surr/misc/dechirico-chron.html

http://www.italica.rai.it/eng/principal/topics/bio/dechirico.htm

Images:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giorgio_de_Chirico_(portrait).jpg

http://wahooart.com/A55A04/w.nsf/Opra/BRUE-5ZKCFH

http://en.easyart.com/art-prints/Giorgio-de-Chirico/Canzone-Meridionale-33530.html

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