Metaphysical Painting

Metaphysical painting (Pittura metafisica, 1911–1920) was an art movement represented by Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978), Carlo Carrà (1881–1966), Alberto Savinio (1891–1952), and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964). Around the time of World War I, some art movements such as futurism looked decidedly to the future, embracing technological triumph of humanity over nature and dynamism and speed over stillness. Others, such as metaphysical painting, returned to traditional methods and iconography with nostalgia for the classicist style and an air of dreamlike suspense. The name Pittura Metafisica was first coined by de Chirico and Carrà in 1917 while they were both recovering from war injuries at a military hospital in Italy. The main characteristics of the style include the philosophical questioning of reality and the use of images that convey a sense of melancholy and mystery.

Brief History

Born in Athens in 1888, Giorgio de Chirico left Greece after his father's death in 1904 and started a long period of travel, which involved frequent changes of scenery, trains and departures. This sense of emptiness and departure features is featured throughout his works. He developed the style that he later called metaphysical painting after studying art in Athens, Florence, and Germany, where he also read the philosophers Nietzsche, Schoppenhauer, and Weininger. In Munich he also discovered the symbolist painters Arnold Böcklin and Max Klinger. Upon his return to Italy in 1909, he spent some time in Milan and Florence where the architecture and the historic past of the city came together with his philosophical interests. De Chirico was profoundly moved by the "metaphysical aspect" of the Tuscan cities, where he painted the first of his Metaphysical Town Square series: The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon (1910) and The Enigma of the Oracle (1910).

De Chirico went to Paris in 1911 to join his brother Alberto Savinio (whose real name was Andrea de Chirico, 1891–1952), who was also a gifted writer, composer, set designer, and painter. Savinio also showed a strong interest in philosophy, psychology, and surrealism. He helped introduce de Chirico to the art circle in Paris, where he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants in 1913. During this period he made contact with Pablo Picasso and Guillame Apollinaire, as well as the art dealer Paul Guillaume. Apollinaire was the first to use the term "metaphysical" to describe de Chirico's work, but the formulation of the school of metaphysical painting came in 1917, when de Chirico and Carrà were patients at a military hospital in Ferrara.

The style of painting invented and practiced by de Chirico and later also by Carrà and Morandi was characterized by a sense of ambiguity in the spatial and temporal aspects, creating uncertainty in the mind of the spectator about the causal relationships between events. The paintings have dreamlike settings within desolate cityscapes inspired by bright Mediterranean cities, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like figures. They evoke haunted, brooding moods in contrast with the strong, saturated palette of deep ochres, reds, blues, and greens, evocative of the Tuscan landscape. De Chirico's painting is characterized by clean geometric forms and lines, which remain exposed and are used decoratively as well as structurally, and distorted perspectives, impossible juxtapositions, and elongated shadows, which insinuate hidden mystical presence.

Metaphysical painting was very short-lived—de Chirico's best-known paintings were produced between 1909–1919, and the group dissolved in 1920. However, de Chirico's metaphysical painting style was very influential on the young artists of the surrealist movement—the painters André Breton and Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire—as well as several notable filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Impact

Under the shadow of World War I, Giorgio de Chirico aspired "to live in the world as an immense museum of strange things, of curious variegated toys that change their appearance." His aim was to turn everyday objects into something else in order to create feelings of uncertainty, mystery, alienation, and even fear. The growing anxiety, even detachment, from the real, was exposed as a visual imprint of darkness and light. The enigmatic effect of de Chirico's paintings was achieved partly by the use of unrealistic perspectives and lighting, inspired partly by the Old Masters Raphael and Luca Signorelli (which later served as an influence on Dalí) and partly by the use of tailors’ dummies, classical statues, and mannequins in place of human figures—a manner that was adopted by the surrealists. Metaphysical painting and surrealism share an interest in dream states, dislocation between present and past, nature-mysticism, and use of symbolic figures. Where they differ is in the Italians’ use of a strong Tuscan and Byzantian palette, reminiscent of allegoric icon painting, and an architectural setting adopted from Italian Renaissance art and from de Chirico's first encounters with the Italian piazzas, arcades and colonnades.

Metaphysical painting, and in particular de Chirico's painterly style, have been influencing artists and filmmakers since the second half of the twentieth century. The most notable example is the iconic film Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by the French film director Alain Resnas, from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. In one surreal scene a tableau of figures is arranged in a geometric, formally landscaped garden; the figures cast dramatic shadows that were in fact painted on the ground, and the trees appear as perfect dark cones. Another example is the film The Desert of the Tartars (1976) by the Italian filmmaker Valerio Zurlini, whose scenery, lighting, and cinematography, and also philosophical questions were influenced by metaphysical paintings. In Andrei Tarkovsky's film Sacrifice (1986), the long uninterrupted tracking shot has been described by the French filmmaker and multimedia artist Chris Marker as "no longer a matter of ethics, but of metaphysics." It suggests similar transcendence of reality and interest in the intangible, symbolic, or sacred. Metaphysical painting and style can also be seen reflected in the cinematic opus of Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Andrei Tarkovsky. The sense of displacement, anguish and overall emptiness can also be traced in works by David Lynch and Agnes Varda.

Bibliography

Alberton, Roberto, Silvia Pegoraro. Giorgio de Chirico: A Majestic Silence. Roma: Silvana, 2010. Print.

Bonito Oliva, Achile. Nature According to De Chirico. Milano: Motta, 2010. Print.

De Chirico, Giorgio. Hebdomeros: With "Monsieur Dudron's Adventure" and Other Metaphysical Writings. New York: Exact Exchange, 1992. Print.

De Danna, Jole. De Chirico and the Mediterranean. New York: Rizzoli, 1995. Print.

Dell'Acqua, Gian Alberto, and Carrà, Massimo. Carrà. Milano: Mazzotta, 1987. Print.

Fagiolo Dell'Arco, Maurizio, William Stanley Rubin. De Chirico. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982. Print.

Holzhey, Magdalena. De Chirico. Cologne: Taschen, 2005. Print.

Merjian, Ara H. Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City: Nietzsche, Modernism, Paris. London: Yale UP, 2014. Print.