Delve into the Enigmatic World of Giorgio de Chirico's Metaphysical Paintings

Discover the immersive journey through Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical paintings showcased at the prestigious Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris (75001). Delve into the enigmatic world of this iconic artist, whose work continues to captivate audiences worldwide.

In one corner of the canvas, a peculiar scene unfolds : a statue, oddly positioned on a deserted square, surrounded by buildings with rounded arches. Grid-like shadows stretch across the ground, casting a surreal atmosphere over the scene. The statue appears disinterested, burdened by the weight of its own existence. Its posture, though suggestive, lacks conviction, perhaps due to the sharp angles of its pointed chest and protocubist silhouette. The artist's choice of perspective adds to the unsettling nature of the composition, as the statue's base seems misaligned with the horizon line. In the distance, two palm trees stand against a backdrop of billowing smoke, the only hint of movement in this otherwise stagnant urban landscape. Despite the clock reading two minutes to three, the shadows betray a much later hour, bathed in the soft, yellow light of dusk.

Experience the genius of Giorgio de Chirico's masterpieces firsthand, as they transport you to a realm where reality and imagination collide. Visit the Musée de l’Orangerie today and unlock the mysteries of metaphysical art.

De Chirico : From Metaphysical Marvels to Neo-Baroque Surprises

Step into the surreal realm of Giorgio de Chirico's masterpiece, "The Reward of the Fortune Teller" (1913), a canvas teeming with skewed compositions, discordant perspectives, and an atmospheric languor. This painting defies temporal confines and defies geographical placement, existing in a realm of its own within the annals of art history. Aptly dubbed "metaphysical painting" by Apollinaire, it represents a spellbinding interlude in the artist's oeuvre and transcends conventional artistic categorization.

The Musée de l’Orangerie focuses its lens on this relatively brief yet profoundly influential period (1909-1918) of Giorgio De Chirico's career, amidst his vast and versatile artistic repertoire, which spanned until his passing in 1978. Over a century since their debut at the 1913 Salon d'Automne in Paris, the deserted city squares, haunted by elongated shadows caressing statues and strewn with enigmatic objects before mannequins asserted their dominance in enclosed spaces, continue to exude an unparalleled allure. The enigma surrounding these "metaphysical paintings" remains as profound as ever.

André Breton, recognizing a precursor to surrealist visions within this pivotal period of de Chirico's work while disavowing the artist's subsequent neo-baroque endeavors, prophetically declared in 1928, "The paintings executed by Chirico before 1918 [...] are still at the dawn of their career." Indeed, even at the time of Breton's proclamation, de Chirico had already embarked on a divergent path. By the 1920s, he underwent a radical artistic metamorphosis, forsaking avant-garde aspirations to embrace a neo-baroque style characterized by grandiosity and theatricality.

Haunting Beauty

To shed light on the genesis of metaphysical painting, the exhibition quietly traces the footsteps of the young Chirico, accompanying him on his numerous journeys across various European art scenes. Interspersed among his pieces are prints, paintings, or sculptures that he encountered or that bear witness to his influence on his peers.

Far from being demonstrative, the exhibition features a well-balanced scenography that begins in dim lighting, gradually unveiling the first metaphysical landscapes before intensifying as the canvases themselves overflow with intricate objects. While the augmented monograph presented by the Musée de l’Orangerie doesn't resolve the eternal enigma of this art, it successfully intertwines it with the history and forms of its time.

Firstly, to the lands of ancient Greece, where Chirico was born. Descending from a Greco-Italian family, he spent his childhood in Thessaly, a land steeped in mythology, home to the Argonauts and centaurs. After studying in Athens with his brother, Chirico cultivated this imaginative world at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, a vibrant hub of tormented and Hellenistic romanticism that linked the soul to the depicted landscape.

The works of Böcklin, displayed in the Orangerie's first gallery, depict rugged mountains cleaving into chasms where centaurs lie, or Ulysses bewildered by the vastness of the sea. These pieces mark Chirico's early style: his fallen centaur in a valley bears a striking resemblance to Böcklin's, with rocky formations inhabited by anthropomorphic shapes, suggesting a fusion of man and nature. Though these early paintings exhibit a hazy execution, far from the precise touch of his later works, they perhaps already embody the artist's persistent yet serene quest for the infinite.

"In the word metaphysical, I see nothing obscure," wrote the artist in 1912. "It is this same tranquil and absurd beauty of matter that appears 'metaphysical' to me, and objects that, thanks to the clarity of color and the precision of volumes, are placed at the antipodes of all confusion and obscurity, seem to me more metaphysical than others."

Oblivious to Reality

In Paris, upon his return from Italy, Chirico adopts a sharp style that meticulously distinguishes each element. Everything, from statues to buildings to tiny figures, appears distinctly unfamiliar. The unifying factor is the scorching sun, never directly painted but always implied through a palette of yellow, ochre, and earthy tones. The artist amplifies this surreal ambiance further. In "The Uncertainty of the Poet" (1913), he juxtaposes a hefty bunch of bananas beneath a female bust and consistently includes a passing train on the horizon, perhaps nodding to his father's profession as a railway engineer. A month later, "The Conquest of the Philosopher" features two formidable artichokes beneath a cannon. The clock above reads one-thirty, while the distant train runs on time. Amidst these signs, "the solitude of signs," as Chirico puts it, the most unpredictable and dreamlike associations of ideas can circulate.

Positioning himself as a visionary akin to Rimbaud (whose "Illuminations" he admired), Chirico depicts Apollinaire in a portrait where the shadow of his friend looms profiled above a bust of Apollo sporting dark glasses, framed by charcoal sketches of a fish and a seashell, symbols of birth. Both poet and painter find salvation by blinding themselves to the present and the real.

However, reality catches up with Chirico with the outbreak of war, leading him to volunteer for the Italian army. Though he sees little combat, being interned for nervous disorders in Ferrara, Italy, the conflict profoundly impacts him and his art, now populated with mannequins. Disjointed, amputated, with faces reduced to bulbous heads, they embody the shocked and pathetic bodies of war victims. Occasionally surrounded by the artist's tools (when they appear before an easel) or confined to cramped rooms cluttered with various measuring instruments (rulers or squares), they serve as Chirico's doppelgängers. The canvases, with their nested frames within the tableau, reflect the trajectory of his painting in a mise en abyme.

Exploring Chirico's Surreal Realms

Chirico's paintings continually diminish the scale of their settings to carve them deeper, revealing doors and crevices that serve as pitfalls into an imaginative realm, at times blocked or teeming, diminutive or grandiose. The painted spaces intertwine less than they cast shadows upon each other. In "Tobias's Dream" (1917), a thermometer towers over a still life with a fish on one side and an arcade landscape on the other, while in the background, a grey geometric composition situates the scene in a sort of basement storeroom. With Chirico, painting becomes a repository of instruments, landscapes, worlds, narratives, and even disembodied beings whose utility has been lost, leaving it to the viewer to reclaim them. Metaphysical painting thus becomes a melancholic, tortuous, groping quest to re-enchant existence and return, like Ulysses (a recurring hero in the artist's later production), to the starting point.