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Lot Essay
"METAPHYSICS means beyond physical things: as we look at certain objects and even as we think, there appear forms, objects and perspectives which we commonly know, and this causes the painter who has the gift or the speciality of feeling and seeing these things 'beyond physical things' to imagine a subject, which may be a subject that we see in the interior of a room or in great Italian squares like those which one sees in Turin. Some metaphysical images appear between sleeping and waking when we have not fallen completely asleep. The image in the metaphysical aspect always evokes a joy mixed with surprise... The most frequent aspects always appear in a room, in which a window appears in the background. These metaphysical objects always have well-defined geometrical aspects: triangle, rectangle, trapezium; sometimes one also glimpses the outline of a temple" (de Chirico, cited in De Chirico and the Mediterranean, ed. J. de Sanna, New York, 1998, p. 10).
For de Chirico, the year 1928 is most significant for marking the artist's final and irrevocable break with the Surrealists; a break characterised on both sides by a bitter disagreement over the overt classicism of de Chirico's new paintings. It is also notable for being the year in which the artist collaborated with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes on the production of Vittorio Rieti's ballet Le Bal, for his growing friendship and collaboration with Jean Cocteau and for the completion of his remarkable Surrealist novel Hebdomeros. Executed in 1928, Tempio greco (Greek Temple) is an important and somewhat autobiographical painting, that boldly asserts the artist's belief in his classical style of metaphysical painting, and one that relates strongly to the many projects in which he was involved during this highly productive and ground-breaking year.
Tempio greco depicts an interior scene complete with mountains, rocks, a mysterious city, a broken column and the portico of a greek temple - which, given its bizarre location, just for a second, takes on the appearance of a wardrobe. The juxtaposition of a landscape scene which incorporates within it powerful archetypes from de Chirico's childhood in Greece with the seeming artificiality of this stage-set-like interior is a typical metaphysical device, that de Chirico repeatedly employed in his work of this period. Like his gladiators fighting in a bourgeois interior or his numerous representations of furniture in the landscape, this juxtaposition is a device that deliberately subverts the visual expectation of the viewer and forces them to re-evaluate the elements of the picture. Yet, as de Chirico was often at pains to point out, the seeming unreality of his paintings was never as unreal as they at first seemed. His interior gladiators were intended as a satirical comment on the mental blindness and political in-fighting of the Parisian art-world, and his representations of furniture in the landscape related to a custom common in Greece after warnings of an earthquake of placing household furnishings outside the house. Tempio greco is the simple reverse of this custom, it is a representation that significantly allows classical form and language into an interior mental space. Like so many of de Chirico's works, Tempio greco depicts a state of mind. One which has close parallels with the following description from the novel Hebdomeros:
"They raised slowly from the deep chiaroscuro of his memory, the shapes of those temples and sanctuaries made out of plaster, built at the foot of hospitable mountains and rocks, whose narrow passages prepared for closed yet unknown worlds, and for faraway horizons, promises of adventure, which Hebdomeros had always loved since his sad childhood. A magic word was shining in the space, like Constantino's cross, appearing again and again in the sky, stretching down to the horizon, like a tooth-paste advertisement: 'Delphi! Delphi!'" (de Chirico, Hebdomeros, 1929, cited in M. Fagiolo dell'Arco & P. Baldacci, op. cit., p. 452).
Evoking a similar atmosphere, the imagery of Tempio greco evidently suggests that the painting is a classical landscape of the mind, and its subject was clearly considered important by de Chirico for he not only returned to it on several occasions but it was one of only five subjects selected by him in a series of lithographs that he produced to accompany Jean Cocteau's long essay on his work entitled Le Mystère Laïc ("The Lay Mystery") also published in 1928. In this extensive essay Cocteau commented on the innate theatricality of de Chirico's work and the appropriation of his childhood memories of Greece as the means by which the artist could stage classical theatre in his "theatreless" adoptive home of Italy. "Greek temples are easily at hand," de Chirico had once commented. "It seems that one can reach out and take them as if they were playthings placed on a table" (de Chirico, cited in ed. J. de Sanna, op. cit., p. 251). Towards this sentiment, Cocteau also argued that by juxtaposing the scale of the temple with that of an interior, de Chirico was not only creating a evocative mental landscape but was also making both objects more real. "When Giorgio de Chirico places a Greek temple and a fragment of a landscape on a table" he wrote, "we cannot tell if the temple is small and the table is large. The temple is neither a toy nor an animated cartoon that mixes cinema and caricature, but a petrified image that has been taken to an extreme. What is surprising is that the handling of the temple shows no difference between the room and the imagination. The truth of Giorgio de Chirico's world is brilliant, preventing us from confusing the temple with a model or the table with an oversized one" (Jean Cocteau, cited in ibid, p. 251).
For de Chirico, the year 1928 is most significant for marking the artist's final and irrevocable break with the Surrealists; a break characterised on both sides by a bitter disagreement over the overt classicism of de Chirico's new paintings. It is also notable for being the year in which the artist collaborated with Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes on the production of Vittorio Rieti's ballet Le Bal, for his growing friendship and collaboration with Jean Cocteau and for the completion of his remarkable Surrealist novel Hebdomeros. Executed in 1928, Tempio greco (Greek Temple) is an important and somewhat autobiographical painting, that boldly asserts the artist's belief in his classical style of metaphysical painting, and one that relates strongly to the many projects in which he was involved during this highly productive and ground-breaking year.
Tempio greco depicts an interior scene complete with mountains, rocks, a mysterious city, a broken column and the portico of a greek temple - which, given its bizarre location, just for a second, takes on the appearance of a wardrobe. The juxtaposition of a landscape scene which incorporates within it powerful archetypes from de Chirico's childhood in Greece with the seeming artificiality of this stage-set-like interior is a typical metaphysical device, that de Chirico repeatedly employed in his work of this period. Like his gladiators fighting in a bourgeois interior or his numerous representations of furniture in the landscape, this juxtaposition is a device that deliberately subverts the visual expectation of the viewer and forces them to re-evaluate the elements of the picture. Yet, as de Chirico was often at pains to point out, the seeming unreality of his paintings was never as unreal as they at first seemed. His interior gladiators were intended as a satirical comment on the mental blindness and political in-fighting of the Parisian art-world, and his representations of furniture in the landscape related to a custom common in Greece after warnings of an earthquake of placing household furnishings outside the house. Tempio greco is the simple reverse of this custom, it is a representation that significantly allows classical form and language into an interior mental space. Like so many of de Chirico's works, Tempio greco depicts a state of mind. One which has close parallels with the following description from the novel Hebdomeros:
"They raised slowly from the deep chiaroscuro of his memory, the shapes of those temples and sanctuaries made out of plaster, built at the foot of hospitable mountains and rocks, whose narrow passages prepared for closed yet unknown worlds, and for faraway horizons, promises of adventure, which Hebdomeros had always loved since his sad childhood. A magic word was shining in the space, like Constantino's cross, appearing again and again in the sky, stretching down to the horizon, like a tooth-paste advertisement: 'Delphi! Delphi!'" (de Chirico, Hebdomeros, 1929, cited in M. Fagiolo dell'Arco & P. Baldacci, op. cit., p. 452).
Evoking a similar atmosphere, the imagery of Tempio greco evidently suggests that the painting is a classical landscape of the mind, and its subject was clearly considered important by de Chirico for he not only returned to it on several occasions but it was one of only five subjects selected by him in a series of lithographs that he produced to accompany Jean Cocteau's long essay on his work entitled Le Mystère Laïc ("The Lay Mystery") also published in 1928. In this extensive essay Cocteau commented on the innate theatricality of de Chirico's work and the appropriation of his childhood memories of Greece as the means by which the artist could stage classical theatre in his "theatreless" adoptive home of Italy. "Greek temples are easily at hand," de Chirico had once commented. "It seems that one can reach out and take them as if they were playthings placed on a table" (de Chirico, cited in ed. J. de Sanna, op. cit., p. 251). Towards this sentiment, Cocteau also argued that by juxtaposing the scale of the temple with that of an interior, de Chirico was not only creating a evocative mental landscape but was also making both objects more real. "When Giorgio de Chirico places a Greek temple and a fragment of a landscape on a table" he wrote, "we cannot tell if the temple is small and the table is large. The temple is neither a toy nor an animated cartoon that mixes cinema and caricature, but a petrified image that has been taken to an extreme. What is surprising is that the handling of the temple shows no difference between the room and the imagination. The truth of Giorgio de Chirico's world is brilliant, preventing us from confusing the temple with a model or the table with an oversized one" (Jean Cocteau, cited in ibid, p. 251).