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Lot Essay
'The world is full of demons - Heraclitus the Ephesisan used to say as he strolled in the shadows of the porticoes at high noon, hour gravid with mystery, while in the dry embrace of the Asiatic gulf the salt water boiled beneath the south west wind. One must discover the demon in every thing. The ancient Cretans used to stamp an enormous eye in the middle of the narrow friezes that decorated their vases, utensils and the walls of their homes. Even the earliest stage of a human foetus, or that of a fish, a chicken, a snake, is an eye. One must discover the eye in everything.' (Giorgio de Chirico 1918, cited in Paolo Baldacci, Giorgio de Chirico: The Metaphysical Period: 1888-1919, London, 1997, p. 319.)
Presently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art New York, I pesci sacri (The Sacred Fish) is one of the last works from Giorgio de Chirico's first great metaphysical period. A landmark of de Chirico's art, this strange enigmatic painting of two fish in a stage-set-like background is a work that has had a profound impact on Surrealism. It was considered by de Chirico scholar James Thrall Soby to be 'one of the principal works of de Chirico's career' and by Paolo Baldacci to be among the artist's 'greatest masterpieces'.
Painted in the winter of 1918 when de Chirico was closely involved with the group that had gathered around the magazine Valori Plastici, this mysterious painting exhibits a combination of the metaphysical and classical values then being expounded in this radical and important publication. It is a strangely memorable work that seems to mark both a sense of closure and perhaps herald a new dawn. Soon after it was painted it was acquired by the editor of Valori Plastici Mario Broglio.
Entitled 'the Sacred Fish', the painting depicts two herrings drying amidst a strange assortment of still-life objects isolated in a bleak metaphysical environment cast in dark shadow and enigma. Like many of de Chirico's early metaphysical paintings, the title of the work and its subject matter draw from a sense of history and in particular the mysteries of Ancient Greece. According to the records of the 2nd Century traveller and writer Pausanias, fish were revered as sacred in several of the temples and sanctuaries of Ancient Greece. In this work amidst the long nocturnal shadows and strange geometries, this brace of 'sacred' smoked herrings take on an apparent mystical significance and uneasy symbolism.
Unlike the sacred fish of ancient Greece which Pausanias tells us used to swim in the pools of temples, these two smoked corpses are represented dead and ready to eat lying on a sharply perspectival platter. They are a bizarre if also magnificent offering or object of devotion that, like his 1914 Portrait of Apollinaire anticipates if not even prompts, the French Surrealists' embracing of the fish as a creature and symbol of mystery and fascination. Exposing the inherent strangeness within even the most ordinary and familiar of objects in this way, I pesci sacri, like many of de Chirico's finest works, stands at the crossroads between a mysterious sense of the past and the uneasy atmosphere of the present.
The picture was painted at the end of the Great War in December 1918 shortly after de Chirico emerged from both the pressures of military duty and a bout of the Spanish flu that had killed millions that year including, in November, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. The synchronicity of these two events, the end of the war and the death of Apollinaire both a close friend and strong supporter of de Chirico's work, seemed to mark the end of an era for him and was commemorated in a eulogy that the traumatized artist wrote in the magazine Ars Nova in November 1918. In this article de Chirico directly contrasted the jubilant streets of post-war Paris with the simple lodgings of the 'sad centurion' Apollinaire, 'the poet and friend who defended me in a foreign land and who I will never see again.' (De Chirico, Ars Nova November 1918, reproduced in Paolo Baldacci, Giorgio de Chirico: The Metaphysical Period: 1888-1919, London, 1997, p. 402)
I pesci sacri too seems to mark the end of an era and, perhaps the beginning of a new one. It is the last of a great series of paintings made towards the end of the war in which de Chirico revisited the melancholy of his earlier Paris paintings and invested it with a darker and more absurdist mood. In his Disquieting Muses, Great Metaphysician or Hector and Andromache a profound pessimism seems to underpin these dark paintings with their awkward and, even at times, comic mannequins. These absurd human constructions seem to mimic the effects of the war on civilization. I pesci sacri is imbued with a similar dark and sombre atmosphere, its two dead fish seeming to be both a product of its environment as well as well as a sacred offering to it. It was painted at the same time as the painting Malinconia ermetica (Hermetic Melancholy) now in the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris and according to Paolo Baldacci, has 'the same compositional viewpoint and the same meaning'.
'During the months of December and January' Baldacci writes, 'de Chirico painted four works, two of which (Malinconia ermetica and I pesci sacri) are among his greatest masterpieces... Malinconia ermetica later called by de Chirico Mercurius docet is a simple and powerful still-life of geometric solids behind which we glimpse the head of Praxiteles' Hermes, the statue Giorgio had seen as a boy in Olympia. The hermeticism is dispelled by Hermes (Mercury), god and guide of souls and dreams, bearer and solver of enigmas. (Paolo Baldacci, Giorgio de Chirico: The Metaphysical Period: 1888-1919, London, 1997, p. 404.) For Baldacci, the 'sacred fish' in I pesci sacri are similarly 'salvific' and 'revelatory' symbols to that of the figure of Hermes in Malinconia ermetica. Set against this strange and gloomy metaphysical landscape with its conglomeration of disparate objects they seem to be both a strange and revelatory manifestation of the hardships of their time as well as an ancient and sacred offering to the beginning of a new era - one that is perhaps represented by the new dawn rising on the horizon at the top of the painting.
Presently in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art New York, I pesci sacri (The Sacred Fish) is one of the last works from Giorgio de Chirico's first great metaphysical period. A landmark of de Chirico's art, this strange enigmatic painting of two fish in a stage-set-like background is a work that has had a profound impact on Surrealism. It was considered by de Chirico scholar James Thrall Soby to be 'one of the principal works of de Chirico's career' and by Paolo Baldacci to be among the artist's 'greatest masterpieces'.
Painted in the winter of 1918 when de Chirico was closely involved with the group that had gathered around the magazine Valori Plastici, this mysterious painting exhibits a combination of the metaphysical and classical values then being expounded in this radical and important publication. It is a strangely memorable work that seems to mark both a sense of closure and perhaps herald a new dawn. Soon after it was painted it was acquired by the editor of Valori Plastici Mario Broglio.
Entitled 'the Sacred Fish', the painting depicts two herrings drying amidst a strange assortment of still-life objects isolated in a bleak metaphysical environment cast in dark shadow and enigma. Like many of de Chirico's early metaphysical paintings, the title of the work and its subject matter draw from a sense of history and in particular the mysteries of Ancient Greece. According to the records of the 2nd Century traveller and writer Pausanias, fish were revered as sacred in several of the temples and sanctuaries of Ancient Greece. In this work amidst the long nocturnal shadows and strange geometries, this brace of 'sacred' smoked herrings take on an apparent mystical significance and uneasy symbolism.
Unlike the sacred fish of ancient Greece which Pausanias tells us used to swim in the pools of temples, these two smoked corpses are represented dead and ready to eat lying on a sharply perspectival platter. They are a bizarre if also magnificent offering or object of devotion that, like his 1914 Portrait of Apollinaire anticipates if not even prompts, the French Surrealists' embracing of the fish as a creature and symbol of mystery and fascination. Exposing the inherent strangeness within even the most ordinary and familiar of objects in this way, I pesci sacri, like many of de Chirico's finest works, stands at the crossroads between a mysterious sense of the past and the uneasy atmosphere of the present.
The picture was painted at the end of the Great War in December 1918 shortly after de Chirico emerged from both the pressures of military duty and a bout of the Spanish flu that had killed millions that year including, in November, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. The synchronicity of these two events, the end of the war and the death of Apollinaire both a close friend and strong supporter of de Chirico's work, seemed to mark the end of an era for him and was commemorated in a eulogy that the traumatized artist wrote in the magazine Ars Nova in November 1918. In this article de Chirico directly contrasted the jubilant streets of post-war Paris with the simple lodgings of the 'sad centurion' Apollinaire, 'the poet and friend who defended me in a foreign land and who I will never see again.' (De Chirico, Ars Nova November 1918, reproduced in Paolo Baldacci, Giorgio de Chirico: The Metaphysical Period: 1888-1919, London, 1997, p. 402)
I pesci sacri too seems to mark the end of an era and, perhaps the beginning of a new one. It is the last of a great series of paintings made towards the end of the war in which de Chirico revisited the melancholy of his earlier Paris paintings and invested it with a darker and more absurdist mood. In his Disquieting Muses, Great Metaphysician or Hector and Andromache a profound pessimism seems to underpin these dark paintings with their awkward and, even at times, comic mannequins. These absurd human constructions seem to mimic the effects of the war on civilization. I pesci sacri is imbued with a similar dark and sombre atmosphere, its two dead fish seeming to be both a product of its environment as well as well as a sacred offering to it. It was painted at the same time as the painting Malinconia ermetica (Hermetic Melancholy) now in the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris and according to Paolo Baldacci, has 'the same compositional viewpoint and the same meaning'.
'During the months of December and January' Baldacci writes, 'de Chirico painted four works, two of which (Malinconia ermetica and I pesci sacri) are among his greatest masterpieces... Malinconia ermetica later called by de Chirico Mercurius docet is a simple and powerful still-life of geometric solids behind which we glimpse the head of Praxiteles' Hermes, the statue Giorgio had seen as a boy in Olympia. The hermeticism is dispelled by Hermes (Mercury), god and guide of souls and dreams, bearer and solver of enigmas. (Paolo Baldacci, Giorgio de Chirico: The Metaphysical Period: 1888-1919, London, 1997, p. 404.) For Baldacci, the 'sacred fish' in I pesci sacri are similarly 'salvific' and 'revelatory' symbols to that of the figure of Hermes in Malinconia ermetica. Set against this strange and gloomy metaphysical landscape with its conglomeration of disparate objects they seem to be both a strange and revelatory manifestation of the hardships of their time as well as an ancient and sacred offering to the beginning of a new era - one that is perhaps represented by the new dawn rising on the horizon at the top of the painting.