surrealism - giorgio de chirico

The Uncertainty of the Poet 1913

More than ten years before the publication of the Manifesto of Surrealism the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico found a way to use the traditional language of painting to describe, not the external world, but a world infused by dream and feelings of melancholy or foreboding.

 De Chirico refers to the 'happiness of the banana tree, luxury of ripe fruit, golden and sweet'. Fruit and flowers in art are generally a symbol of the briefness and insignificance of human life and pleasures, and here De Chirico may be making a contrast between this and the permanence of art represented by the bust. However, the combination of the bust and the bananas has an unmistakeable sexual significance and they also seem to be a symbol of the forces of life and the sensual delights of this world.

Metaphysical Art is the translation of the Italian Pittura Metafisica, a movement created by Giorgio de Chirico and the former futurist, Carlo Carra, in the north Italian city of Ferrara. Using a realist style, they painted the squares typical of such Italian cities but the squares are unnaturally empty, and in them objects and statues are brought together in strange juxtapositions. The artists thus created a visionary world of the mind, beyond physical reality – hence the name.

what i like about surrealism is every part of the painting or art piece has a meaning and is not just put there for the image to appear real. with this painting it can be dissected and each piece relates to a different thing happening at that time such as freud with the bananas and the trains being new and dream like. this painting seems like a huge bench mark when it comes to researching about art as its completely different from what was known as art before.