Giorgio Chirco contra Giorgio Chirico

Giorgio De Chirico was once, for a short period of his life, an absolutely amazing pre-surreal painter. One of the pioneers of the magical, dreamy and captivating world of imagination in his highly original paintings. His work was very different, and unique for the time in which he created it. Even today if you are in the Tate Modern, or in other museums which have De Chirico's paintings in their collections, you will always immediately recognize his paintings but only those from the 'surreal period'. Even Breton loved him and admired him. This in itself was already a miracle, because as both rumours and facts tell us Breton was a real tyrant and he didn't like anybody. In Paris from 1911 to the outbreak of war De Chirico developed his 'Metaphysical painting': a self consciously enigmatic type of picture clearly inviting Freudian forms of interpretation. As he expressed himself in written text somewhere between 1911 and 1915:

To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream. Profound statement must be drawn by the artist form the most secret recesses of his being; there no murmuring torrent, no birdsong, no rustle of leaves can distract him.

A few year later De Chirico deserted the new movement, actually all the avant-garde of his time, and become obsessed with the old masters, with the technical methods especially of earlier Italian painters. He abandoned his metaphysical - surreal - enigmatic style and became a classical painter. In his own words, written in 1919:

The neglect of anthropomorphic representation, and the deformation of it, encouraged entire legion of painters to turn out stupid and facile reproductions. With its return the problem of animal-man looms larger and more terrible than ever, since, this time, the right weapons to confront it are lacking, or rather they are in existence, but they are blunt, and many have forgotten how to use them. ...... To return to the craft! This will not be easy and will demand time and toil. The schools and the masters are deficient, or rather they are vilified by the colouristic riot that has invaded Europe in this half-century. The academies exist, full of methods and systems, but, alas, what results they produce! What on earth would the weakest student of 1600 say if he could see a masterpiece by a professore of an Italian academy, or by a cher maǐtre of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris?

Back to the old De Chirico from the Metaphysical paintings:

It is most important that we should rid art of all that is has contained or recognizable material to date, all familiar subject-matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished forthwith. More important still we must hold enormous faith in ourselves: it is essential that the revelation we receive, the conception of an image which embraces a certain thing, which has no sense in itself, which has no subject, which means absolutely nothing from the logical point of view (... ) should speak so strongly to us, evoke such agony or joy, that we feel compelled to paint...

What a contrast and contradiction to his ideas from a few years later:

This is the point we have reached. This is the state of confusion, ignorance and overwhelming stupidity in the midst of which the very few painters whose brains are clear and whose eyes are clean are preparing to return to pictorial science following the principles and teaching of our old masters. Their first lesson was drawing, drawing, the divine art, the foundation of every plastic construction, skeleton of every good work, eternal law that every artifice must follow. Drawing, ignored, neglected and deformed by all modern painters....

Somehow after the First World War De Chirico returned to tradition and mastery. He summed it nicely:

I am calm, and I decorate myself with three words that I wish to be the seal of all my work: Pictor classicus sum.*

Everyone can change and everyone has the right to do so. Unfortunately in the case of De Chirico his decision to reject his enigmatic style of painting, from the point of view of art history, wasn't such a good decision. Nobody really is interested in his work from the neo-classicism period. De Chirico wasn't really consequent in abandoning his most successful style, soon after 1920 he begun faking his own early work.

 In 1926 he created a work which now belongs to the Tate Modern collection entitled 'The Painter's Family'.

'The Painter's Family' by De Chirico - 1926

The painting was made in the 'metaphysical' style. He only did it for money, probably. But the work misses the enigmatic, the melancholic and the somehow depressive aspects of his early work. The Tate Modern owns two more paintings: the first 'The Uncertainty of Poet' is from 1913 and the second 'The Melancholy of Departure' from 1916.

 'The Uncertainty of Poet' by De Chirico 1913

'The Melancholy of Departure' by De Chirico 1916

* I am a classical painter


Another post about De Chirico:
Enigmatic poet of nostalgia - De Chirico

Liebster Award!

I totally forgot to mention that I was nominated for a Liebster Award. I also forgot to thank Miguel for such a nice recognition of my hard work and hours spent to make this blog as good as possible.

Miguel who has an excellent blog - http://storberose.blogspot.pt/- about literature in general and Portuguese Literature in English, nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award along with 4 other bloggers who have excellent and unusual blogs, but less than 200 readers/followers.

I was really happy with this recognition and although it is not a real award and it will change nothing in my life, it made my day. I don't post every day because I am busy with so many things and English is not my first or second or even third language. Therefore it costs me more time to write the post, but when I do it it is very often about totally new, marvellous artists (for most of you) or about unusual topics connected to surreal, magical and fantastic art.

Thank you Miguel!

I promise to write more. At the moment I have 5 really interesting posts to finish. One is about a, for the most of you unknown, Austrian-German painter from XX century, who had such an incredible talent and made most unusual, fantastic, magical etchings. His work will really surprise you.

Another is about one of the top contemporary surreal painters - Jaroslaw Kukowski.

Jaroslaw Kukowski - two of his famous paintings. 

Another two are about Siena, Sienese art and painters. Last June when in Siena I discovered a few surreal works made in XIII/XIV century. It totally blew me away.
The last post is about an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London - Poetry and Dream. The whole concept is a kind of nonsense, tightly stretched but nevertheless there are two De Chirico's there.

Now, I have to nominate five other blogs which, like mine, have less than 200 followers. And here the problems begin for me. I don't know enough blogs with excellent content with less than 200 followers. I can only think about one blog that I mention here below.
If you have any suggestion about interesting blogs about art, literature, politics, history, science or other issues, who have enriched the blogosphere and deserve more recognition, visits and linking, please let me know.

Here is the first blog:
http://econnexus.org/blog/  - A brilliant, excellently written blog that aims to enlighten people about "The Ecological/Economic Nexus"; what the Economist magazine calls "the challenges posed by the “three Fs”—food, fuel and the financial credit crunch" and to help provide solutions to those challenges. It also provide information on what we as individuals can do to help alleviate these problems.

The enigmatic poet of Nostalgia and Melancholia:Giorgio De Chirico; Part II

Click here for part I  of De Chirico the enigmatic poet.

In Paris from 1911 until the outbreak of the First World War Giorgio de Chirico developed his ‘metaphysical painting’.  Those artworks are very enigmatic, self-consciously enigmatic. There is lots of inspiration and influence from mythology, philosophy, Freudian psychoanalysis and probably his own experience. De Chirico was born in Greece in 1888 from Italian parents. He was born in the city of Volos, an ancient mythological city, the city where the expedition and the adventure of Jason and the Argonauts search for the Golden Fleece began.  De Chirico identified himself with the gallant heroes of old Greece, and especially with Odysseus; I assume for his symbolic meaning: imagination and allegory.

Most of De Chirico's paintings from 1911 until 1917 are very sad, I would say. There is almost a feeling of no familiarity, a feeling of something inexplicably unpleasant, and a feeling of mysterious melancholy. Without any doubt they are great in a strange way. There is lots of feeling of the ancient past, lots of meeting between words, objects, architecture, history, and the sound of silence, the weirdness of the perspective, persons, the imagination, and fantasy. It is a perfect, beautiful match between a poet and an artist.

There is one painting I absolutely adore.  I didn’t see it in the flesh unfortunately. Maybe if I had, my perception of it would be different.  It is ‘The Disquieting Muses’ from 1916.

The Disquieting Muses - oil on canvas, 1916

In the background appears the Castello Estense or the Castle of Saint Michele of Ferrara. Ferrara was considered by De Chirico as a metaphysical city.  In the centre of the painting are two tailors’ dummies, waiting for something unexpected, for someone to rescue them from the nostalgia, thinking about a glorious past, talking to their own unconscious. Who knows? Moreover the answer isn’t important at all, what is important is the melancholically beautiful poetry of De Chirico's imagination.