Giorgio de Chirico – Metaphysical Artist (1888 – 1978)
Giorgio de Chirico – Melancholia, 1916
When talking about writing Mythopoeia and the idea of writing for you versus within the modern cultural tropes, I have often looked at the visual arts for inspiration. “Metaphysical art” was a short movement that occurred around 1915 in the early part of the 20th century following the Modernist paintings of Picasso and others after the end of the 19th century.
Mythopoeia and writing mythological literature is a new movement today that is growing quickly as we leave behind 50 years of Postmodern rebellion and the Millennial Generation ushers in a new age of self exploration in 2017 and beyond. But myth-making is very much connected to past historical themes and artistic movements. De Chirico was an Italian painter that was very much exploring this idea of myth and the concept of the “beyond real” aspects that can encompass all great writing, music, and art.
Metaphyiscal Art like Mythopoeia is the idea of the mind’s inner world’s that lie within and yet beyond ourselves in strange spaces we barely perceive except in waking dreams…..of accepting those spaces and the tragedy of our past and the world’s, of time and the timelessness of reality, looking towards the odd and strange spaces of the human mind which alone can comprehend the world.
I have always loved de Chirico’s strange surreal paintings…the idea that such places live in both the physical world our eyes perceive but “re-filtered” through our mind’s interpretation of time and space and its sad almost irrational nature. For that reason we must not forget the great art of history…..so much value and meaning still lies hidden there.
His strange empty Italian villas and hollow manikins reflecting the light and shadow of a dying sun remind me of dreams I have had and the mythological landscape of our unconscious where meaning and reality have been left behind and replaced with something more sublime and transcendental…..a place reconstructed and born again into the mythical meaning of the mind.
As writers of myth and of dreams it’s critical we explore not just the rich expansive landscapes of our imaginations bathed in the consumerist reality of the world today but the ones that like a “twilight zone” hint at something darker or metaphysical beyond it…..something beyond physics, beyond relationships, beyond even ourselves and our limited time here on this planet. It’s these strange spaces that alone show us how our brains can transcend the shallowness of the world and our lives and look beyond to greater timeless spheres that awaken something richer and deeper in us.
Because it’s in those world’s that our Creator lies in waiting to show us what lies beyond it all if we but have the courage to face it fully…..
– the Author
