Chirico and Sentiment ("Together--they fight crime!") · 2:08am Feb 6th, 2017
Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was a guy who started out painting stuff like this:
The Disquieting Muses, 1916-1918
And ended up doing stuff like this:
The Divine Horses, 1963
How does a guy go from nightmare fuel to Celestia and Luna v0.1? The lazy thing to say is, well, he just got sentimental as he got older. A more plausible thing is that he was short of cash in later life, so he painted pictures of dewy-eyed horses to get money from the kind of people who've always liked pictures of dewy-eyed horses.
But I think one thing more. I think that, yes, his later paintings could be sentimental--but only because he was using sentiment as other artists use light or color or perspective: as a technical quality that could be dialed up or down to achieve a desired effect.
I think this is best explained by looking at Chirico's paintings of horses*...
When I was looking for art for "Aubade" I wanted something moody and atmospheric, but beyond that I didn't know what. I started looking online and quickly gravitated to Chirico, since I'd blogged about him before.
My first pick was this:
But after thinking about it I realized it was a little too mushy, a little too sentimental. I didn't want an illustration that was so on-the-nose. I wanted it to be more discreet--much like the main characters in the story.
Chirico seemed to have a fascination with giving horses anthropomorphic expressions and since those expressions seemed to be the problem, I thought perhaps a painting that de-emphasized them would be better. But this...
..was just a little too weird. You could argue that, though the horses' faces are eyeless masks, they still recognize and rejoice in each others' presence. And you could argue further that this is a metaphor for the characters' sub rosa romance. But Hooves's and Cheerilee's professional faces, while carefully and deliberately controlled, and are neither inscrutable nor insincere. They are both social and perceptive characters, though their professions require them to show less than they may feel.
This, though, was Just Right:
Oriental Horses
Here, joy is evident in the horses' capering, and affection in the way their heads are turned towards each otherr. This also, conveniently, moderates the horses' anthropomorphic expressions. They aren't completely concealed: the viewer can see a bit of each horse's face, and that's enough. Enough to suggest, without beating the viewer over the head with it, that these creatures are feeling emotions that humans understand and cherish.
And from these three pictures I realized there's a whole spectrum of sentimentality at play here, like degrees of light and darkness or colors on a palette. And the more of these horse-pictures I saw, the more it seemed that Chirico was doing this deliberately, running up and down the scale of sentimentality, experimenting with the thing itself and in combination with other elements.
Such as chiaroscuro. One of the things that attracted me to that painting was how the horses seemed to inhabit a little spot of light amidst an encompassing darkness. And love can indeed feel like that. Then I realized the light was coming from off to the left, while the right of the painting was still dark--exactly as if they were lit by the rising sun. This in turn suggest a new title for the story, which was a godsend as I hadn't yet found one that satisfied me: "aubade" is an old term for a sort of love-song that suggests lovers parting at dawn, having spent the whole night together.
Chirico's soulful-eyed horses are most often shown contrasted against backgrounds that are both literally and figuratively dark--stormy skies, ruined cities. It makes for a strong aesthetic tension, and it seems to have engendered a bleak and beautiful poem by C.S. Lewis. This posited a post-apocalyptic setting in which the last human is dead, and all that is left to repopulate the world are these two horses, the wisest and strongest of their kind, who had managed to escape being hunted and eaten:
They are called. Change overhangs them. Their neighing is half speech.
Death-sharp across great seas, a seminal breeze from the far side
Calls to their new-crowned race to leave the places where Man died—
The offer--is it the prophecy?--of a Houyhnhnm’s Land
Some MLP fanfiction posits the same setting as the genesis of Equestria.** Remember that most of Chirico's horse-paintings were done in the thirty years after the end of World War II, when nuclear apocalypse was a recurring theme in art and entertainment.
And the Equestria of "Aubade?" It is facing its own apocalyptic battle, though no one knows it quite yet
There's a reason for all those strange dreams that happen that one night: Bertie's and Hooves' particularly. For that evening, while walking in the palace gardens of Canterlot, Princess Celestia has encountered a butterly whose wings shone blue in the gloaming like two glowing eyes, and which said, in a voice that was ever so low:
"What doth MĀNA-YOOD-SUSHĀĪ?"
* Which form a genre so distinct, Google Images returns entirely different results for "Chirico" and "Chirico horses." The former shows only his early work, without a single horse painting. It's as if they were an embarrassment that had to be cordoned off from from his Surrealist works, like screaming fans roped off from rock stars.
** And it's canon in Adventure Time.
"Remember, all horses have two enormous throats within their necks and enjoy making sea-pasta."
4410854
Mr. Doodle calls it "macaroni."
Ooh, that Gods of Pegana reference!
I always appreciate those who are not afraid to dabble and dance in sentiment. No tool, no emotion should be off limits for the artist. How quickly does the choir praising self-expression halt when one breaks that solemn rule.
4411173
I figure Celestia and Luna are escaped lesser Gods of Pegāna. And eventually all their old cronies come looking to muscle in on their thing.
P.S.--in case you don't get the joke in the title:
d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/612869.jpg
(Yes, I just explained a joke with another joke. "Sue me, sue me, what can ya do me...")
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Oooh, brilliant. I had an even weirder, though likely less brilliant, private theory but it requires... mmm... it requires knowledge of a rather obscure online game which means I can't tell anyone. It's rather driving me batty.
Which makes me think, actually... Hm. Suggestion #1: Look up, if you haven't, Fallen London. I feel that it will be right up your alley and while its gameplay is rather insipid time-wastery, the words the gameplay comes wrapped in are absolutely top notch. And, hey, if you want an... ah, injection of the feel of it (and don't want to be dropped in the middle of it with no context which may be what the authors had in mind) I wrote a fanfiction about it you just might enjoy. And, yes, the MrNumbers in the story is meant to be our MrNumbers. I wrote it to welcome him to the game. As it were. For exotic values of 'welcome.'
Suggestion #2: Tanqueray, Angostura bitters, San Pellegrino Limonata. Nothing to do with the circumstances, but less presumptive of your time than suggesting a game with 500 000 words of prose in it. :)
I am here for Chirico, and sentiment, and Gods of Pegana, and Fallen London. And...and gin. 10/10
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I recommend Bluecoat, out of Philly:
phillygrub.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/martini-vs-martinez.png?w=610&h=406
To the left, a Martini, made with the dry gin (it's great in G&T's as well) To the right, a Martinez, with their barrel reserve. The Martinez is supposed to be the ancestor of the Martini, and it's a good drink to try on people who prefer whiskey to gin.
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Well if I'm ever in Philadelphia... an unlikely contingency, I must admit, and even less likely they'd let me back into the country with a few bottles of that tucked under my hat.
Shame.
I see your prefer lemon peel for your Martinis. Personally, I peel a lemon into thin strips and then muddle them right there in the glass (care must be taken or the stem will just snap, especially since absent a bit of abrasive sugar it requires some elbow grease) fishing them out before pouring the drink. If I do it right it adds a little brightness I think a dry Martini desperately needs[1].
[1] I'm a Martini heathen: I don't even like dry martinis (or as I think of them 'why did you put this olive into my gin?') and prefer a preposterously sweet 1:4 perfect Martini or, if I've the gin bottle and the cocktail shaker out already, a dry sharp Emerson which is a close cousin of the Martinez though with a citrus-y sharpness that I think gin-based drinks need.
Sorry. I'm babbling.
4421987
S'okay, my dad doesn't like martinis, either. In fact my whole family isn't at all keen on mixed drinks, except me. Baa baa black sheep...
I didn't take the picture: that's a grab from a website, courtesy of Google images. In fact I do like an olive, but a twist is always an acceptable substitute for just about any sort of garnish: olives, onions, marschino cherries, etc.