pp. 58-59
That the early de Chirico is routinely (if wrongly) said to
have resurrected fifteenth century perspective(17) – indeed, even “academic
perspective”(18) – as an aspect of his supposed classicism, any review of the
de Chirico literature will confirm. Even Soby speaks of his “revival” of
“illusory, linear perspective.”(19) Ironically, it is precisely through a
careful comparison of de Chirico’s perspective with that of his presumed
Renaissance model that we can best begin to isolate the peculiarly
twentieth-century character of the painter’s early aesthetic.
Renaissance perspective projects a space that is secure and eminently traversable. De Chirico’s tilted ground planes, on the contrary, produce a space that, when not positively obstructed, is shallow and vertiginous. The viewer understands fifteenth –century space as an illusory continuation of his own space; his place in relation to the donnée of the picture – and thus, by extension, to the general scheme of things – is clear and logical. And the unity of that relationship is expressed mathematically and visually in fifteenth-century perspective by its systematic focus, which draws all orthogonals to a single vanishing point. Consider, by way of contrast, de Chirico’s Enigma of a Day (below, left).
Here the orthogonals of the arcaded building at the left meet not at, but above, the horizon line, to the left of the lower smokestack; those of the right-hand building meet at the foot of the other chimney; and the vanishing point of those of the statue’s socle is somewhere far outside the pictorial field. The same multiplicity of vanishing points is evident in Gar Montparnasse (above, right). In this powerful composition, the virtually continuous alignment of the station’s front lintel (parallel to the picture plane) with its side on (receding from it) forces us to fix our perspectival eye at the lintel’s height in space – so that we feel suspended insecurely in a void (as is also the case of Enigma of a Day), rather than having our feet firmly planted on the ground at the point where the space begins, as in fifteenth century perspective. The multiple vanishing points of these de Chirico’s thus subvert the coherence of Renaissance perspective by confronting the viewer with a network of conflicting spatial tensions that undermine, psychologically speaking, any initial impression of quietude or stability.
De Chirico alludes to the irrational, indeed, fantastical nature of his perspective in occasionally including, as a picture within a picture, a canvas shown at the preliminary stage of its line drawing. In The Seer (above), for example, a mannequin sits before an easel on which the framed picture is a perspectival plan for a painting showing a long arcade behind which looms a toga-wrapped figure earlier borrowed by de Chirico from Böcklin’s Odysseus and Calypso for his 1910 Enigma of the Oracle (below). At first glance, the image, the image on the easel almost appears an exercise in the science of perspective; its diagrammatic form and negative light-on-dark drawing also suggest an engineer’s or architect’s blueprint, recalling the materials of the painter’s engineer father. We see architecture and space projected within a context of perspective orthogonals, compass and ruler forms, numbers and upper- and lower-case letter resembling the keys to cross sections or elevations, and the cryptic city name, “Torino” (Turin)
On closer inspection, however, the diagrammatic image in The Seer reveals itself as a fantasy of
science – a cabalistic project no closer to systematic focus perspective than
to actual plans of an architect or engineer, and in that sense parallel to
Duchamp’s “funny physics.” The looming Odysseus figure interrupts the scale
established in the architecture, overturning that logic and order which
Renaissance perspective imposed on pictures (though making the figure all the
more menacing and thus satisfactory to de Chirico’s expressive needs). And the
geometrical projections, like the orthogonals, turn out to be either illogical
or (in any rational sense) meaningless, the numbers and letters as cryptic as
the “Torino”(20) What all this adds up to here and elsewhere in the early work
is a virtual parody of perspective, an “irrationalization” of a system that in
the fifteenth century was a branch of projective geometry. The “classical” thus
finally emerges in de Chirico’s early work – whether as a formal structure or
as a subject – essentially as a metaphor. By subverting classicism, by turning
it inside out, he communicates the singular malaise of modern life.
But de Chirico’s modernist instinct undercuts traditional
perspective in still other, even more radical ways. The illusionism of
fifteenth-century painting was not a matter of linear perspective in and of
itself. The linear schema was but a web of coordinates within which the figures
and objects were – as a necessary concomitant – modeled in the round. Hence the realistically illusioned solid
forms (Berenson’s “tactile values”). In Renaissance painting, the mass of the
figure is seen quantitatively, with modeling in the round creating the illusion
of a continuous turning that completes the cylinder of the mass while the empty
space acts as a foil to the relief of the figures and objects, enhancing their
tangibility by contrast. Moreover, in the mid-fifteenth century, painters
learned to “shade” the empty air, so to speak, by reinforcing their illusion of
deeply receding space through the technique of aerial, or atmospheric,
perspective.
Pp 61-62
The standard comparison, the, which pits the modernity of the Futurists (loudly proclaimed, but ultimately ambivalent, as we shall see) with a supposed revival of classical Renaissance techniques in de Chirico seem to me thoroughly wrongheaded. No matter that statements by the Pictor Classicus himself (published, as noted, after he had given up his early style in favor of old-fashioned illusionism) provided whatever “authority” was needed for most critics to assume that even his early work pointed in a direction opposite to the modernism of his contemporaries.
The standard comparison, the, which pits the modernity of the Futurists (loudly proclaimed, but ultimately ambivalent, as we shall see) with a supposed revival of classical Renaissance techniques in de Chirico seem to me thoroughly wrongheaded. No matter that statements by the Pictor Classicus himself (published, as noted, after he had given up his early style in favor of old-fashioned illusionism) provided whatever “authority” was needed for most critics to assume that even his early work pointed in a direction opposite to the modernism of his contemporaries.
Fifteenth-century Italian painting, like old-mater art, is
illusionistic. De Chirico’s early painting, like all great modern art, is
nonillusionistic. Sofflici had intuited this fact, insisting that “if geometry
and the effects of perspective constitute the principal elements of [de
Chirico’s] art…it is also true that his work resembles no other work…based on
the same elements.” Yet how, the reader may legitimately ask, can an art using
perspective lines, however scrambled, be considered nonillusionistic? The
answer follows from the definition of illusionism itself.
The modern effect of the early de Chirico depends upon the fact that his linear perspective – and this is the nub of the matter – by not being reinforced through the traditional concomitants of modeling in the round and /or aerial perspective, remains a purely schematic scaffolding that does not force a picture into a condition of spatial illusionism.
The modern effect of the early de Chirico depends upon the fact that his linear perspective – and this is the nub of the matter – by not being reinforced through the traditional concomitants of modeling in the round and /or aerial perspective, remains a purely schematic scaffolding that does not force a picture into a condition of spatial illusionism.
The common denominator of all the great modern styles –
whether figurative or not- is the suppression of illusionism (an optical effect
alien, in any case, to simple or schematic forms of representation). When
linear perspective is supported by modeling in the round and atmospheric
perspective, as in Renaissance (or academic) art, the eye is confronted by an indivisible
illusion of receding space, to which perception it is obliged to respond. But
perspective orthogonals alone – because they propose deep space conceptually
rather than optically – leave the eye a choice. As long as the orthogonal lines
are disengaged from modeling, their position on the surface remains equivocal
and permits a double reading: they can be understood
as a schematic indication of three-dimensional space, or they can bee seen, alternatively , as simply a
pattern of lines on the flat surface, a pattern that in no way interrupts the
lateral continuity of the configuration. De Chirico’s early work abounds in the
fruit of this perception. Consider the magnificently shaped sunlit plaza whose
ambivalent plane “recedes” to the distant train in Gare Montparnasse (p. 32). While we understand this plane as
retreating in space, de Chirico’s handling of linear perspective and shadow
tilts it so vertically that the eye is strongly invited to see this powerful
geometrical shape as parallel to the picture place.
Nor was de Chirico unique in the recognition of this
particular ambiguity. Matisse’s Red
Studio (fig. 9), executed in 1911, just as de Chirico was forming his
style, is an object lesson in the principle involved. The orthogonal lines of
Matisse’s floor and table indicate three dimensional space, but they do not
illusion it, because the normal concomitants of shading and modeling are
suppressed. The chance that the eye will read these lines as retreating in
space – and thus interrupt the image’s lateraldeocrative continuity – is
further minimalized by the painter’s having endowed the walls, floor, table,
and chair with a common Indian red that becomes identified with the picture
plane. Like the de Chirico (pl.61), but in a different spirit and with other
expressive aims, Matisse also inverts the perspective of foreground objects, as
witness the orthogonals of the chair, which narrow toward the viewer rather
than away from him. Indeed, with magisterial wit, Matisse continues the game of
ambiguity – of eye versus mind, perception versus conception, illusion versus
schematic representation – by applying local color only, or almost only, to
objects which are themselves flat (the oil paintings, wainscoting, and
decorated dish).
The paintings of Klee are also replete with indications of
deep space that somehow never destroy his surface unity or compromise the
modernity of his style – and for the same reasons. In his Zimmerperspektive mit Einwohnern (fig. 10), for example , we are
presented with what appears at first a classic “perspective box.” As in de
Chirico and Matisse, however, the “receding” planes of Klee’s room seem to
cling to the two-dimensional surface.
While this results in part from the “unfocus” of Klee’s perspective – the
absence of a unified vanishing point – it has even more to do with the suppression
of supportive modeling or shading along the orthogonals of his forms. There is,
to be sure, considerable shading in the
image, and it does create a kind of atmosphere. But the lights and darks of
that shading form an autonomous pattern that not only disengages from but
contradicts the perspectival indications of both objects and empty space.
Finally, with a wit less sovereign but more affectionate than Matisse’s, Lee
introduces a pun based on the ambiguity of the potential readings. Are we to
see the man, woman, and child in the lower right as standing up or lying on the
floor?
The Surrealists most influenced by de Chirico’s early art –
Tanguy, Dali, Magritte, and Delvaux – understood its poetry but failed to grasp
the essence of its plasticity. They made the same mistake as so many of de
Chirico’s commentators: they mistook the perspective referents of his spatial
theater as constituting a revival of old-master illusionism. Compare the Tanguy
and de Chirico paintings [on this page] (figs. 11, 12). To many viewers, the
Tanguy would seem the more modern picture because it represents abstract forms
rather than recognizable ones. Yet I find that the Tanguy looks old-fashioned,
indeed, academic, while the de Chirico has a modern appearance. Tanguy’s academicism
lies precisely in the smoothly graduated modeling in the round and the aerial
perspective with which he endows respectively his solids and empty spaces. Together, these techniques make the Tanguy an
illusionistic picture in a way that the de Chirico is not. Hence, the
unfamiliar, “abstract” shapes of Tanguy appear more real – more solid in the
tactile sense – than the identifiable shapes in the early de Chirico. And
Tanguy’s sculptural biomorphs displace a space that – because of aerial
perspective – obliges the eye to accept an illusion of great depth.
17 Raffaele Carrieri finds characteristically that de Chirico's elaborate constructions" are nevertheless realized "with a perfect knowledge of the rules of perspective" (Giorgio de Chircio" in Forme [Milan: Milano-Sera-Editrice, 1949], p. 72). H. H. Amason summarizes the common assumption in stating that "de Chircio's space is uncompromisingly that of Renaissance perspective" (History of Modern Art [New York: Abrams, 1968], p. 286).
18. Giorgio Castelfranco and Marco Valsecchi, Pittura e scultura italiance dal 1910 al 1930 (Rome: De Luca Editore, 1956), p. 19.
19. Soby, "The Scuola Metafisica," p. 19.
