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| Giorgio de Chirico The Philosopher's Conquest 1913-14 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
Metaphysical Painting
This was an Italian art movement that took shape during the First World War. Out of it came works that fascinated André Breton and the other Surrealists. They were even tempted to enroll de Chirico as one of their group. Yet although he allowed himself to be photographed with them, and although his manner certainly overlapped theirs in some ways, he always remained reserved, even reluctant, and broke away decisively some few years later.
Titles
Not only a painter, de Chirico was also a remarkable writer, and we can perceive this in the titles he gave to paintings. These are always evocative, while often notably at odds with the elements he chose to represent. The Uncertainty of the Poet, The Child's Brain, The Evil Genius of a King, Mystery and Melancholy of a Street, The Enigma of Fatality.
Phrases like these make one think of Magritte and his irreverent use of titles at a later date, but whereas Magritte would often ask his friends to concoct them for him, de Chirico's titles were exclusively his own.
Disappearances
Disappearances
Here we see a deserted urban landscape, as in most of the artist's work at this time, a long vista punctuated by uprights – these might be pillars or columns or factory chimneys. In front of one, a tiny train passes with its plume of smoke; nearby we make out the sails of a far-off ship. Dreams of departure.
Catastrophe is suggested. The population has disappeared, but only recently, since they have left behind their shadows, as we can see on the ground at right behind the beveled gray pillar. Unless these are the shadows of statues.
Cosmic Time and Clock Time
In some of de Chirico's paintings there are dark blue skies which shift to green as they approach the horizon, then brighten and turn almost yellow. Here, the sky is darkening and long shadows are forming, more likely evening than morning, a sun dropping low rather than rising. But one could also imagine an apocalyptic morning when the emptiness of the city is discovered.
In some of de Chirico's paintings there are dark blue skies which shift to green as they approach the horizon, then brighten and turn almost yellow. Here, the sky is darkening and long shadows are forming, more likely evening than morning, a sun dropping low rather than rising. But one could also imagine an apocalyptic morning when the emptiness of the city is discovered.
Suspended above the train, a clock gives the time as 1:28. This is puzzling, out of alignment with the light conditions. In Faust, Part Two the clock stops at midnight. Here, it is neither night nor mid-day; therefore, this must be a clock that no longer works, a clock that has stopped. But why at the precise time shown? Routinely in mystery novels a stopped watch establishes the time of the crime. In this picture, the stopped clock marks the moment when the disaster occurred.
The hollow white tube in the left foreground suggests a cannon, but in fact more nearly suggests a sculpture of a cannon, with sculpted ammunition stacked above. In many cities around the world, a shot from a small cannon marks the noon hour. Next to the cannon-shape are two fine artichokes with spiny leaves, apparently uncooked.
To Be Modern
We come back to the title: The Philosopher's Conquest – which is time. The philosopher must be able to set time aside (to defeat it) and so comprehend it from the perspective of eternity. One eats an artichoke leaf after leaf, the same as those calendars whose pages are torn off day after day. The artichoke equates to the clock and to the chronometric cannon. It will not do to miss the departure of one's ship or of one's train. Yet in this canvas one is not and cannot be on time. An effort must somehow be made to recapture that state, to find a way to be modern, to people this desert haunted by shadows and monuments.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)