A NOTE on GIORGIO DE CHIRICO's “SONG of LOVE” I an Early Painting from Giorgio De Ch

A NOTE ON GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’S “SONG OF LOVE” 1 2 3 4 5 I   an early painting from Giorgio de Chirico’s so- 6 called metaphysical period, “The Song of Love,” as The Seduction 7 of Unreason’s graphic template. In many respects, the painting’s 8 imagery is germane to the theme implied by my title: that “unrea- 9 son” has an uncanny power to fascinate and seduce. 10 De Chirico, of course, became an icon among the Surrealists. 11 Breton adjudged him one of the first genuinely Surrealist painters: 12 the artist who was responsible for initiating a revolutionary break 13 with the unpardonable prosaism of representational art. (At a later 14 point, when de Chirico abandoned metaphysical painting for the 15 assurances of neo-realism, he fell out of favor with his one-time 16 champions.) 17 The iconography of this image is both simple and inexhaustibly 18 rich. According to scholarly lore, much of it derives from the artist’s 19 boyhood in Volos, Greece: the wall, the green cloth ball, and the 20 smoking locomotive—a de Chirico fixture. 21 But the painting’s most striking imagery concerns the provoca- 22 tive juxtaposition of the Apollo Belvedere and the rubber surgical 23 glove. In light of Apollo’s status as a god of illusion and appear- 24 ance—an interpretation famously codified by Nietzsche in The Birth 25 of Tragedy—de Chirico’s painterly tribute to him is fitting and unre- 26 markable. Moreover, the visage of Apollo—also the god of love— 27 gives the painting its title. 28 Yet the image of Apollo presented here is a fragment—a lifeless 29 and oversized bust. As such, de Chirico’s tribute is both reverential 30 and irreverent. The painting purveys a sense of “transcendental 31 homelessness”: de Chirico’s homelessness as an émigré, as well as 32 our own irreducible alienation from the classical tradition. The tra- 33 dition still speaks to us, but it does so in a language we do not imme- 34 diately understand. Out of this loss, de Chirico is trying to forge 35 new meaning—a new, post-classical iconography, a symbology S36 “after the fall,” as it were. At the same time, the painter knows that R37

125-76684_ch00_3P.indd 43 11/8/18 1:50 PM xlivxxii a notesA NOTE on ON the THE “SONG“song OF of LOVE” love” 1 the new symbolism is destined to be non-classical: a symbolism con- 2 demned to fragmentation. As a painter, de Chirico’s bravado lay in 3 the fact that he accepted this condition and made it the subject mat- 4 ter of his art. 5 But, undoubtedly, the painting’s most disconcerting image is the 6 gigantic rubber glove, nailed to the wooden partition next to the 7 Apollo bust. Before de Chirico had had a chance to incorporate it 8 into the painting, this glove-fetish caught the attention of Guil- 9 laume Apollinaire. Writing in the July 1914 issue of the Paris Journal, 10 Apollinaire announced: 11 Mr. de Chirico has just recently acquired a glove of pink rubber, one 12 of the more extraordinary objects that one can find. It is destined, 13 once copied by the artist, to render his future works even more strik- 14 ing and disconcerting than his past ones. If one asks him as to the 15 terror that this glove is capable of inciting, he will speak to you 16 immediately of the still more terrifying toothbrushes just invented 17 by the dental art, the most recent and perhaps the most useful of all 18 the arts. 19 20 Why the “terrifying” glove? Was de Chirico merely heeding Baude- 21 laire’s maxim that the “painter of modern life” must lionize the 22 everyday? Is the glove de Chirico’s humble contribution to the cre- 23 ation of a “modern mythology” (Aragon), a mythology the disen- 24 chanted denizens of the modern urban life so desperately crave? In 25 any event, the glove and the Apollo Belvedere represent a genuinely 26 striking juxtaposition; they are living proof of the Surrealist insight 27 (borrowed from Lautréamont) about the “marvelous” nature of a 28 “chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissect- 29 ing table.” In point of fact, de Chirico’s glove happens to be a surgical 30 glove. In this way, nine years before the publication of Breton’s “Man- 31 ifesto of Surrealism,” de Chirico anticipated the Surrealist doctrine of 32 “objective chance.” Thereby, both de Chirico and the Surrealists put 33 the intoxicating powers of “unreason” to productive use. 34 35 36 37

125-76684_ch00_3P.indd 44 11/8/18 1:50 PM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 • THE SEDUCTION OF UNREASON• 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 S36 R37

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