Giorgio de Chirico and the metaphysical city : Nietzsche, modernism, Paris / Ara H. Merjian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Merjian, Ara H., 1974- author.

Contributor:

Yale University Press, publisher.

Language:

English

French

Italian

Subjects (All):

Metaphysical school (Art movement)--Italy.

Metaphysical school (Art movement).

Space (Architecture) in art.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Italy.

De Chirico, Giorgio, 1888-1978--Criticism and interpretation.

De Chirico, Giorgio.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900--Influence.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm.

De Chirico, Giorgio, 1888-1978.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvi, 351 pages) : 246 illustrations, portraits

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2014]

Language Note:

Includes translations from the French and the Italian.

Summary:

For the artist Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), a founder of the metaphysical art movement, the year 1914 marked a momentous and pivotal time in his aesthetic production. He completed most of his well-known paintings of metaphysical cityscapes that year, just before the advent of World War I, while living in Paris. These paintings emerged within the context of the city's avant-garde circles, and they ultimately redirected the course of modernist painting. Ara H. Merjian's text considers the artist's representation of architectural space in relation to his sustained engagement with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and addresses why the painter's 'Nietzschean method' takes architecture as its means and metaphor, a physical premise for metaphysical revelation.

Contents:

Introduction : the Nietzschean method

1. A pathos of distance : metaphysical perspective, 1912-1914

2. The city, squared : Gare Montparnasse

3. The prison-house of painting : the Enigma of Fatality

4. Untimely objects : The Evil Genius of a King

5. Ecce homo (Orthopedicus) : The Seer

Conclusions : urban untimely.

Notes:

Description based on print record and online resource (A&AePortal, viewed on July 3, 2019).

"This book began as a dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley.... An abridged version of chapter four appeared in the journal Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, vol. 57/58 (spring-autumn 2010), while a few passages from chapter two appeared in an essay for California Italian Studies, January 2010"--Acknowledgements.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780300250770

0300250770

OCLC:

1107321005