Gladiators at rest (gladiators au repos) 1928-29, oil on canvas, 157 x 198 cm.
In the late 1920th, Giorgio de Chirico was commissioned to create a series of gladiator paintings for Léonce Rosenberg, an art dealer. One of these pieces ‘gladiators au repos’, designed for Rosenberg’s apartment in Paris, is the last but not least piece of the Guggenheim exhibition ”Chaos and Classicism”. Hang next to a grim painting depicting a military figure on horse, de Chirico’s gladiators at first glance give the impression of pseudo-classical Fascist art.
Looking more closely at de Chirico’s painting replaced my dark thoughts about fascist terror with amusement. The muscle-rippling gladiators look deliciously bored. It appears that de Chirico was blessed with a sense of humor.
In Wikipedia, as of today, one learns that Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter who founded the scuola metafisica art movement. Wikipedia defines scuola metafisica by stating that de Chirico’s dream-like paintings of squares typical of idealized Italian cities, as well as apparently casual juxtapositions of objects, represented a visionary world which engaged most immediately with the unconscious mind, beyond physical reality, hence the name. Likewise, from Wikipedia we learn that Léonce Rosenberg is an early advocate of abstract art and cubism who provided moral and financial support for these (its) artists. It appears that people’s activity during the early to mid twentieth century are more complex than it is often represented.
It took some more googling to learn of the later activity of Giorgio de Chirico that could be interpreted as ‘intellectual romance with fascism’ or as a good joke on the politics in Italy between World War I and II.
Hello Birgit:
I keep seeing the gladiators as done by De Chirico when I check in. At first I thought them as arbitrarily malformed but have begun to sense a certain necessity in them. For me the painting is – bottom up – an exercise in a compositional mode that first sets the proportional rules and then asks the artist, working as a willing self regulator, to remodel the human characters into misfits in order to fit. Fascism you say? It pushed people out of shape – is that it?
Jay,
The composition of the picture is brilliant. The image could be a take-off on paintings where a flower-filled vase is the central attraction, emphasized by a receding background of an elegant interior. Unlike the flowers in those pictures, here the heads are weak and drooping.
Is this what happens when fascists/patriots set out to defend traditional values, national culture against the spirit of the time?
On another thought, is the strength combined with lethargy depicted by De Chirico a pictorial representation of what has happened to A&P?
Birgit:
Entities with the initials “A” and “P” seem to have limited life spans. The big grocery chain when I was a kid was the Great Atlantic and Pacific. We would titter to the ditty: “Go to the A and pee.” But I must agree – there has been a shortage. of titillating ditties on this A&P of late – your efforts excepted. .
Jay, and yours as well. The two survivors are patting each other’s back.
Birgit:
In my personal opinion A&P reaches out much more comprehensively than does the average personal site.
David Palmer: I’m using A&P because you seem to have disappeared from my G-mail contact list. I do want to know more about your dinnerware. Please update.
I recently visited the exhibition and greatly enjoyed your perceptions about it! Thank you.
I recently visited the exhibition and greatly enjoyed your remarks! Thank you.
Except that your ridiculous interpretation is refuted by De Chirico himself in his memoirs:
“Efforts were made to spread the legend that fascism, like Nazism, had forced our artists to paint for a long time in a conventional manner and forbidden them to go along with ‘liberty in art’, linking them to the ‘glorious’ Paris school, directed and organised by the dealers in the Rue de La Boetie. But for the sake of truth it must be said that the fascists never forbade people to paint as they wished. The majority of the fascist hierarchy were in fact modernists enamoured of Paris, just as the democratic and republican Italians are today.
As for the portraits of the leaders and the pictures and frescoes on fascist subjects which the painters were commissioned to carry out at that period, these could also have been consummate masterpieces like the paintings which, from the sixteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, were commissioned from the painters of the time by governors, popes, princes and benefactors. If the official works carried out during the fascist period have left no trace, it is only because they were painted during a period when mastery and quality had completely disappeared from painting, as is the case with all modern painting, which will also pass without leaving the slightest trace, but it was not the fault of fascism.”
As the above comment points out, there appears to be a ‘disconnect’ between the quoted excerpt of de Chirico’s memoirs and my interpretation of the gladiator picture.
It will be interesting to research whether de Chirico, similar what has been written about Cezanne, represents his ideas differently in painting and writing.
I am a relative of De Chirico. And from what I have gathered, his sense of humor was very conceptual. Responding to criticism from dealers and the other surrealists themselves, De Chirico reproduced his earlier, more popular works, then back dated them-so to inflate the value.
Nicholas Chirico, if you happen to see this comment and would be willing to share any information you have on Giorgio de Chirico that would be appreciated. I am a masters student writing my thesis on him. My email is melissakirk93@me.com
Long shot, I know.
THis 1996 NYT article makes the same comment on this work – that the gladiators look ‘bored’, and perhaps ironical comments against Fascism are implied.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/13/arts/the-riddler-of-modernism.html
Contrary to Proud Fascist comment here that your query about irony is ‘ridiculous’, the NYT article goes on to say that right wing critics of the time agreed with your idea and distanced themselves from de Chirico as a consequence. So, Proud Fascist, maybe you should reconsider, since real fascists at the time judged de Chirtico differently than you.
If you wish to call those fascists ‘ridiculous’, I would not complain… ;)