[Music]
earlier this year
when so many millions of us were
confined to our homes
newspapers and tvs and phones filled
with
images of the abandoned world beyond our
walls
a world built by us for us
without us it was odd
eerie the kind of imagery you only ever
see in post-apocalyptic movies
city centers normally crowded with
bodies
empty except for some hungry and
probably deeply confused
pigeons it reminded me of the paintings
of giorgio
de kitiko an italian artist who was a
founder of the metaphysical art movement
in 1909 dekiriko was sitting on a bench
in the piazza santa croce
in florence recovering from an
intestinal illness
when all of a sudden he had a profound
experience
the whole world down to the marble of
the buildings
and fountains seemed to me to be
convalescent
the kittico glimpsed a reality behind
appearances in which everything was
healing
like he was from that experience came
this painting
the enigma of an autumn afternoon which
reproduces the piazza santa croce but
with a few changes most notably the
basilica facade
is stripped of all its detail and its
shape is altered
it appears also to be only the facade
you can see through the tops of the
doors
to the blue sky beyond the structure
behind it
has disappeared in the actual piazza a
statue of dante stands in front of the
basilica
in this version the statue's head has
disappeared too
and its position has been moved beside
it two
small lonely figures stand together
casting
long shadows in the unusually empty
square
the enigma here is in the relationship
between decatico's impression that day
in the piazza
and the painting it ultimately produced
this and all the plazas in his
metaphysical town square series
are simplified empty cut with dramatic
shadows
they feature recurring motifs like those
heavy shadows or
roman arcades or statues in the
foreground tall
cylindrical buildings in the background
and trains in the distance
these are spaces we know but they're
rendered dreamlike by the kiriko's
compositions
the revelation he feels can't be
communicated by
a realistic depiction of the world or
for that matter
a realistic depiction of vision he
admired the impressionists and the
pointless for
their experimentation but believed they
didn't go
far enough to see reality without the
mediating filter
of our ideas about it the world must be
made
new for the viewer and to make the world
new it must be made
strange the artist must live in the
world
as if in an immense museum of
strangeness
full of curious multicolored toys which
can change their appearance
it was the strangeness of dakitiko's
paintings their
mystery and hallucinatory quality that
made him such an influence on
the surrealists they too wanted to
capture a world of dream logic
in which something profound could arise
from irrational juxtapositions and
spontaneous creation
in 1924 the year baton published the
surrealist manifesto
the kitiko traveled to paris and was
accepted into the group
but by then he had moved on from his
metaphysical phase and returned
to older forms of painting the
surrealists trashed his new work and
dakitiko cut ties with them
in an acrimonious split he kept working
through the rest of his life
all 90 years of it but as is often the
case
never enjoyed the same success he did
during his early period
but it is those early works those
bizarre melancholy town squares
that came to my mind when the
coronavirus tore through the world
and cleared our public spaces of people
for a little while cities and towns
became immense museums of strangeness
and it was possible to see what we built
through
alien eyes what kind of species
would make such monuments what drove
them
to design their world like this what
forces and desires gathered them into
communities of such
extreme density and are they satisfied
with what they've made for themselves
in a year of such pain and suffering
these images
offered a small but unique gift of
reflection
the kind of reflection that dakirico
sought to spark with his work
though the pandemic isn't over our
spaces are already filling back up
soon enough we'll pick up the routines
we dropped in march and
the built world will fade again into the
background of our lives
i'm ready for that as i'm sure you are
too
but every once in a while these images
like those paintings
will resurface and will remember that
time when our world became
profoundly strange
hey everybody thank you so much for
watching and congratulations on
getting through this here this episode
was sponsored by nordvpn
nordvpn allows you to take control of
your online experience by being an
intermediary when you connect to the
internet either through their app or
their chrome extension
they have thousands of servers in over
60 countries that protect your privacy
by hiding your ip address from prying
eyes
also if you're running out of shows to
stream during this pandemic using
nordvpn allows you to access
region-specific content from anywhere in
the world for example if you live in the
us you can't watch the edgar wright
directed sitcom
space highly recommended but with
nordvpn you can switch your server to
the uk
and there you go it's available nordvpn
has a special holiday plan for my
viewers
right now every purchase of a two-year
plan gets you 68
off plus an additional four months for
free and this deal is only available for
a limited time so if you want to get
yourself a vpn for the holidays
go to nordvpn.com nerdwriter or use the
offer
code nerdwriter