I can’t quite say these make me “happy”- but I can say that ever since I encountered de Chirico’s stuff, in my Humanities class in high school, I have been fascinated by it. it’s got its hooks in me. I find it scary – like a terrible dream – but I can’t look away. There’s something monotonous about it all – he always has the same elements: — an approaching train (sometimes all you can see is the smoke coming into the “frame), elongated shadows, huge piazzas, some kind of Roman classical statuary – fragments – long distances – I don’t know. I just love his stuff. It reminds me of something. Maybe Sylvia Plath’s later poems, with the visions of statuary – and “bald mannequins” in Munich – those creepy un-populated landscapes.
Place Métaphysique Italienne 1921
Ariadne, 1913
Delights of the Poet 1913
Melancholy
Melancolie Hermetique, c.1918
Melancholy and Mystery of the Street, 1914
Song of Love
The Nostalgia of the Infinite,1913-14
The Conquest of the Philosopher
Ooh – and here’s another nice one
Happy (??) Place
I can’t quite say these make me “happy” (like most of my other entries in this category – but I can say that ever since I encountered de Chirico’s stuff, in my Humanities class in high school, I have been…
I got hooked on DeChirico in H.S. humanities too! Primitive. Disturbing.
One of the things I find so evocative and creepy about his stuff is the overwhelming feeling you get of a state. Like an Orwellian state I mean – not a state of mind, but a government. Even though there are no people in his pictures – or what people there are are far far away … it has the feeling of Red Square, or other totalitarian urban landscapes – where the idea is to make the individual seem tiny.
Maybe I was off in saying that the landscapes seem un-populated. I think what is creepy about them is that they seem DE-populated. Huge difference, if you know what I mean.
Yes, as if someone were trying to make a certain impression that didn’t have anything to do with actual people.
And the impending darkness, always impending darkness. The last of the light.
*De*populated, yes. These are urban landscapes, built by people–so where are they?
All those long angles, big shadows, very dreamlike and creepy. I tend to dislike works with very flat, plain areas of color, but he uses them well.
I dig zooming perspectives though–Dean, excuse me, Robert Dean Stockwell uses that quite a bit in his work too.
Karen – ha! All roads lead back to Robert Dean, it is true.
There was that one collage of his with the big sweeping photograph of the cathedral full of people – member that one? The perspective on that one was dizzying – I’m not sure which cathedral it was, but it was so big that the people in the pews looked like tiny ants … It was beautiful! Member it??
Karen: Found it. This was the collage I was talking about
“Sunday Machine” is fascinating, but it kinda gives me the creeps. :-) He seems to have a thing about cathedrals. Mostly a good thing, but maybe in this case, not so much.
Karen – hahaha Yeah – even the title of that collage gives us some idea of Stockwell’s thoughts on the matter!
Waiting for the Great Pumpkin
I love a retreat where the written instructions involve putting up a “deer gate” at night. I got a ton of work done – I’m amazed at myself – and even had a nice crying jag (a good one, not…
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