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Giorgio de Chirico and the metaphysical city: Nietzsche, modernism, Paris

2015; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 52; Issue: 09 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.187045

1943-5975

Ara H. Merjian,

Literature and Cultural Memory

Painted in Paris on eve of World War One, Metaphysical cityscapes of Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) redirected course of modernist painting and modern architectural imagination alike. Giorgio de Chirico and Metaphysical City examines two most salient dimensions of artist's early imagery: its representations of architectural space and its sustained engagement with philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Centering upon a single painting from 1914 -- deemed by painter the fatal year -- each chapter examines why and how de Chirico's self-declared Nietzschean method takes architecture as its pictorial means and metaphor. The first, full-length study in English to focus on painter's seminal work from pre-war Paris, book places de Chirico's literary images back in context of city's avant-garde, particularly circle of Guillaume Apollinaire. Merjian's study sheds light on one of most influential and least understood figures in 20th-century aesthetics, while also contributing to an understanding of Nietzsche's paradoxical consequences for modernism.