Giorgio de Chirico

Author(s): Pierre Mazars

Source: Yale French Studies, No. 31, Surrealism (1964), pp. 112-117
Published by: Yale University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2929729
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PIERRE MAZARS

Giorgio de Chirico

Coming across the strange silent canvases of Giorgio de Chirico,

where one sees vast deserted public places, long stretches of flag-
stones, porticos and pediments, Apollinaire exclaimed: "This is the
most astonishing painter of our times." In corners of his paintings we
find a locomotive, a wax mannequin, or a plaster statue-each look-
ing as though it had been abandoned. Struck by a disturbing premo-
nition, Chirico had also done a portrait of Apollinaire a considerable
time before an exploding shell left the poet with a head wound. In
that portrait a viewer saw a scar on the forehead of the author of
A icools; it was as though fate had guided the brush. That was in
1911. Chirico had come to Paris from Italy in a rebellious mood and
with an air of defiance and disdain. He was a friend of Picasso's and
the avant-garde painter par excellence. No history of Surrealism or
fantastic painting could be complete without mentioning him.
And then it all stopped. Chirico disappeared, secluding himself
in his Roman studio until a few years ago when he broke his silence
for the first time in order to express his scorn for contemporary art.
A Venetian artist told me that he had grown angry with him at the
end of a quarter-hour of conversation. Was Giorgio Chirico denying
all he had been? Had this pioneer of modern art become a turncoat?
The problem is a good deal more complex than that, for Chirico in
no way scorns the paintings of deserted places done during what has
been called his "metaphysical" period. There are still moments when
he paints in the same manner. I have seen one such canvas recently
at the San Stefano Gallery in Venice.
But he is also painting horses and flowers in a style and with a
technique which are quite different. And each year, as has been his
custom, he gathers together all the paintings he has done at the Bar-
caccia Gallery in Montecatini. He is sixty-five now, and grows angrier
and angrier. Perhaps a better word would be "irritated." He is taking
the measure of our times.
"Formerly," he said to me, "the fact that a painter was known was
the result of his merit. But today! There's a kind of dictatorship in
painting. They haven't yet got to the point of shooting their enemies,
but.... Well, they make people believe that if they don't like such
and such a painting, they are being either provincial or illiterate. And
so the public gets in step. Before the war such things didn't happen
in an isolated country like Italy, but now Italy is also subject to this

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 vim-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~i

. ., s ,._ M. ! . . A d _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.. . .

Giorgio de Chirico: The Mathematicians (Drawing)

Collection Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.

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Giorgio de Chirico: Metaphysical Interior (Oil on canvas)
Yale University Art Gallery, Collection Societe' Anonyme

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PIERRE MAZARS

type of freemasonry. The central headquarters of the party are in

Paris, just as Communism's central headquarters are in Moscow.
You're told: 'Don't talk about this fellow.' Yes, there are ukases and
diktats. In the long run people don't like anything. They don't detest
anything either."
Chirico and I were seated deep in the chairs of the bar at the Hotel
Daniele where you can still see the rooms once occupied by Musset
and George Sand. The painter likes this faded old palace decor.
The embattled demeanor of his thirties has been lost. On his face
there is rather a touch of irony and resignation. I asked him what
sort of impression he had when he saw his name inscribed in capital
letters in the history of Surrealism.
His white hand cut through the air: "Just another misunderstand-
ing. I never went through a 'Surrealist period.' Quite simply there
was a period when I painted subjects that had nothing to do with
naturalism. The Surrealists wanted to draw me into their ranks, like
Leonardo da Vinci."
"Why?"
"For business reasons; the Surrealists had bought some of my
paintings at Paul Guillaume's. They wanted to have the same sort of
windfall with me that they'd had with the doluanier Rousseau. They
thought I would die in the war or that I wouldn't come back to Paris.
I was taken for an hallucinated Italian. When I did come back with
other pictures, they declared war on me. It's been a long time since
I've had any contact with them."
"That doesn't keep people from admiring the paintings you did
during that period."
"That's another misunderstanding. A reputation of that kind isn't
always flattering. What matters in Paris is business-the gilded calf.
In Paris there's wickedness and avarice. I lived there for seven years.
I sold many canvases, but there are always those pseudo-intellectuals
who want what they force on others to be on the same level as what
they're capable of."
"How do you explain the Surrealist enthusiasm for your work."
"Humpf. I never thought Surrealism was more than a bottled joke.
I xWas more concerned with creating a work that would be my own.
In 1911, while in Italy, I was painting those things I found pleasure
in imagining-things that were the exact opposite of Surrealism.
When I was twenty, I devoted myself to literature and philosophy,
to eighteenth and nineteenth century German philosophy. Nietzsche's
books gave me a taste for those Italian cities with their many porti-
cos. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche describes various states of the soul. He
speaks of the mystery of fall, an execrable season whenever it's
evoked by certain nineteenth century poets who were inspired by
tubercular young girls. Nietzsche, unlike them, discovered a fall of

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 Yale French Studies

clear skies and long shadows. He was right; in the fall objects are
stretched out. This provides a more poetic climate than the tradition-
al fall. It's the earth's period of convalescence. Summer is the fever-
ish period. Entirely too many people see life in the spring, and that's
death. There you have some idea of the atmosphere in which I was
painting during my 'metaphysical period'."
"Are you an inspired painter?"
"There is no inspiration in painting. Perhaps there is among the
poets. The public thinks that all of a sudden flames shoot up in the
artist's room, just as in the Old Testament. But the subject doesn't
mean anything; the essential basis is the quality. When a painting
has great quality, it becomes everything; it's music, it's poetry. A
beautiful picture is first of all matter. Poussin and Velasquez were,
before anything else, superior artisans. Technique counts more than
anything else."
"And today?"
"Today there's nothing but equivocation and bad faith. Works are
not supposed to distract the public from what's fashionable. As an
example, take the case of the French poet Vincent Muselli whose
verses I know by heart. You can't imagine the trouble I have to go
to in order to obtain his works. It's much the same with Andre
Derain whom I knew well and who is the only painter today who
has made some contribution."
"And Picasso?"
"I knew him well, too. I think highly of him. But his paintings
might as easily not be painted. A sketch would be enough. Picasso is
more cerebral than plastic. What is startling in him is his humor.
One day when the Russian painter Kokoschka was mentioned in his
presence, he exclaimed: 'That's the Czech word for cocaine, isn't it?'
"From those days in Paris I also remember Jean Paulhan. He's a
man who doesn't talk; instead he says all the time: 'Ah . . . Oh ...
I say.' He always looks astonished. Once he gave me a small book
of Madagascan literature. I learned from it that their word for moon
is 'rano,' if I remember correctly. The book was small enough to fit
in your vest pocket. There were many blank pages in it, a huge
title, and a dedication. All that's a kind of system among the writers.
They and the painters want to be original whatever the price. But
the best originality is to paint well. Those who understand painting
the least are the ones who concern themselves with it the most.
Workers have a better sense of painting than critics who are always
trying to seem intelligent."
"Which painters do you like?"
"Vuillard, especially certain aspects of his bourgeois salons and
remote spots of Paris. I find him superior to Bonnard. I remember
one of his canvases: a dentist's office. Extraordinary thing. There is

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PIERRE MAZARS

something mysterious about all those ladies bent over next to a lamp.
He's a painter who has great appeal for me."
"And among the younger painters?"
"I'm not familiar with them. There's probably no one. I see no
one of interest. It's all over with painting anyway. And with civiliza-
tion, too. But the end won't come within the next ten years; we'll
have time to die. Today they're making atom bombs and sending
Argonauts into space; but just think of what a student of Leonardo's
painted and then of what is being painted today."
"When did this decadence begin?"
"With Impressionism, for reasons no one recognizes: because of
the progress of industry. Until Courbet's time, artists had a job: to be
painters. Then industrial colors and oils came along. Colors were
standardized and manufactured as though they were tinned goods.
Then Impressionism began. People pretended it was an answer to the
need for light and air. Imagine that-as though there were no light
and air in Claude Lorrain's paintings. What happened was that paint-
ers who couldn't paint well began looking elsewhere. Take an exam-
ple: in London I saw a painting by Monet, depicting some water,
hung right next to a Ruysdael. In that position, the Monet appeared
black.
"A man who restores old paintings told me the other day that if
Titian were to come back into our midst and wanted to paint, he
wouldn't find any of the materials he had used. He'd end up by doing
charcoal sketches."
"Do you prepare your own colors?"
"Yes, and I also look after my own canvases and coatings."
"It's said you still do paintings in the spirit of your 'metaphysical
period'."
"That's right. The one I'm exhibiting in Venice-the locomotive
stopped next to a tower-was painted a short while ago. But modern
painting is full of falseness. It's extraordinary how much of it there
is. You go after a beggar who has stolen bread, but there's no law
against those who falsify art."
"You're not at ease in this age."
"Ah, no. But I've got used to it. I've grown accustomed to this
wdrld-as Mithradates got used to poison."

(Reprinted with permission from Le Figaro Litteraire, 21st Septem-

ber 1963)

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