De Chirico Lands at the DUMA

t can be taken as a refreshing proof of the existence of some sort of natural justice in the universe that Giorgio de Chirico, a genius most mortally in touch with his own unique muse, was plagued by forgers and allegations of deceit throughout his career and after his death. Most hold that de Chirico himself forged many of his own paintings, backdating others to skew the chronological record of the most notable thing he ever possessed, a unique vision of exactly how a remarkable painting is executed.

The de Chirico exhibition currently on view at the Duke University Museum of Art is a rare delicacy for Duke students. It is notable not only for securing the works of such a celebrated figure, but for the delightful manner in which the exhibit's shortcomings provide added commentary on the man himself.

Giorgio de Chirico was an artistic Hamlet. A man fully realized for his fantastic, at times, otherworldly talent, yet a man who was in his paintings and actions pulled to humility by the conventions of his own world.

To the eye of most viewers only one painting in the exhibit will stand out as being classically de Chirico, a scene of a courtyard surrounded by high arched buildings with a statue in the middle of it. The lines of the statue are unbelievable yet dynamically human. The square itself is deserted and bleak, painted in earthy tones with chalky shadows that at once divorce the scene from any corner of this world but forge a strong union between the modernity of the structures themselves and the interesting conclusions demanded by a city devoid of inhabitants. Here we see de Chirico romancing his muse, at home in a lush world of his own creation and imagination. If only he had stayed there.

Most disappointing are paintings of horses, typically characterized as kitsch but perhaps more deserving of the word chintzy, nay, cheesy. They are the work of a master whose genius moves too quickly for his own attention span, for his own visceral needs. In an attempted imitated marriage of the baroque and the romantic, de Chirico succeeds in creating nothing, save for a few amusing lines of equine musculature. Like the points of heaven that men of the middle ages mistook the stars for, irrepressible genius revolting against an imposed conformity.

More original are two pictures of classical inspiration. In one the figures of ancient gladiators assume an amorphous and subconscious resonance, almost in defiance of the thick black lines which hem them in and hold them upright. In the second a sword is added to the heads of three men to show that they are warriors, though the master needed no such props to convey the wistful notions of surreal emptiness so aptly created in the superior courtyard painting of the exhibit.

At the end, we understand de Chirico in an almost romantic sense, and know him like the heart of some former lover which is closed off yet intelligible all the same. We respect him as a genius of the most human proportions.