De Chirico and the theory of relativity Giorgio de Chirico and The Theory of Relativity by Ralph Schiebler
The conference held at Stanford University, October 1988
[...] In 1911 Marcel Duchamp painted sad Jeune Homme dans un train, and in 1912 celebrated the second version of the Nu descendant escalier, images, "continue" (as defined by Franz Wickhoff) of times in succession - though not easily fade defined - relative to a body in motion. The picture was sensational Armory Show in New York in 1913. Always looking to the means of locomotion, in the same year Duchamp mounted a bicycle wheel on a common base, making way for the kinetic art.
Given these swirling motions, the figure rises to classical statuary and Giorgio de Chirico. Watch her Les Plaisirs du poète, painted in 1912 in Paris, effervescent capital garde, now at MOMA, New York. One can not conceive of a difference larger than the works just mentioned. The first impression is of a rigid fixation. On the one hand, this is achieved with the use of a strong although slightly skewed linear perspective, a system that seemed liquidated and dissolved by Paul Cézanne, on the other hand, the effect is achieved by a kind of fossilization. The square is completely bare of vegetation, which includes a lone figure, share this with a sense of grief. However, we do not live a state of immobility, immobility away because something within (rather than the eternal temporary). There is a train approaching the station, there are flags fluttering in the wind, as Hölderlin would say, there is a fountain welling up in the heat of midday, with its tapered trapezoidal contour, it is unknown whether the effect of perspective or real and we are, above all, the arrows of the clock mark two in the afternoon. The forward one minute left of the arrow, curiously, is very similar to that of the moon exactly on the boundary between the movements perceived and imperceptible to the human eye. On the other hand, the sunlight that burns relentlessly on the Mediterranean piazza, made more intense by the deep shadows, is a bit 'too fast to be perceived. In this way, one hand still seems the same way as light. Time is closely related to the speed of light, as we shall see in ten minutes. The weather is also the basis for determining the speed and acceleration. Today, even the units of measurement - that one year after the birth of de Chirico was defined as the distance between two marks on a bar of platinum-iridium alloy X-shaped near Paris - is defined as the distance traveled by light in a very small fraction of a second. So the nineteenth century until 1914, defined the age of acceleration, may also be defined as the age of time, ie time when the time elapses apparently faster, or a time of increasing awareness of time . I have already mentioned examples in the field of visual art that reflects the consciousness of time. It should be added, however, an example from the literature: The Time Machine by Herbert George Wells. The time machine is traveling the reader into the future or the past (when it does not remove it from the picture three-dimensional). This "science fiction" as he calls the author, was published in 1895, the same year that Albert Einstein led an experiment mathematician can convince him that the traditional concept of space and time could be incorrect. Wells had published a first version of his work in 1888 under the title The Chronic Argonauts. That year, Giorgio de Chirico was born in Thessaly in the Greek town of Volos, seat of Iolcos, which according to Greek mythology, the Argonauts Jason, Orpheus, Heracles and others, had put in his quest for Vello d ' gold. De Chirico loved to imagine himself as one of those heroes on board Winch (in the twenties he painted The Departure the Argonauts). The ship Argo was said - and this is important - that he was able to travel at the speed of light. In its route to the Black Sea it passed through the Simplegadi, a dangerous Bosporus strait where two rocks swinging crushing every creature that tried to pass. The Argo, passing, broke the spell and the rocks were blocked forever. It is anticipated that this theory of relativity: For those traveling at the speed of light, the world will look in the direction of the movement and really will be as flat as a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, the time in this world will cease to spend. We return to Les Plaisirs du poète. Only a clock would not be enough to infer that the time is the topic main panel. Neither alone would suffice to note that the time has concluded that a painted or photographed clock has lost its movement. In this painting, however, first we see three different types of timers: a water clock - one of the oldest tools of measurement of time - indicated by the fountain, a sundial, out of the shadows wandering the square and under the arches; the mechanical clock on the station. This variety of timepieces - which must be added the 'clock rock "made in unraveling the architecture - presents a variety of weather types, including atomic and astronomical time, which, inconsistent, requiring leaps in sequence. The astronomical time, in fact, is so inconsistent within itself to take leap years.
The next point, on the arrest of time, is that the hands are stuck in a frozen composition extremely firm and fixed, with an impression of durability. De Chirico is able to produce an atmosphere of eternity, the same that he has heard in moments of "revelation," almost "soft moments of sensitivity", lived in Florence and Turin. The result is a transcendental mood that hovers above the stones. Equally strange is the sky green - still in the taste of the poet - the contrast between the higher nature and his solid foundation in physical reality. The common side of the Platonic Ideas and the architectural and artistic development that we see in the paintings of de Chirico is their considerable resistance to the flow of time.
addition to choices of atmosphere, de Chirico's work choices also allegorical. Do not, however, as just quoted from Goethe's Faust: "The clock will stop, its hands will break, the weather will be behind me." And that's just because in ancient times, and especially from the Renaissance, philosophers have a thought of time and space are closely associated with the temperament of melancholy. De Chirico often condenses a melancholy mood over the squares of Italy, which become materialization of "Melancholy". The Recompense
du devin, 1913, is now at Philadelphia Museum of Art On stage, asleep on his bed to a contortion Cubist is lying the vigorous figure of Melancholy. Its features are the realization that the time is transient, although it occurs in the depth of thought or dream. The time of day is three or four minutes before Les Plaisirs du poète, and the train beyond the wall may be a bit 'faster. This includes the fact that the steam is pushed right against the wind blows hard from the right, as they also say the flags at the station. The station is another allegorical or at least metaphorically. A station, literally, is the place where things are stationed. We can see the paintings of de Chirico as stations where the arrow (the train) of the time suffered a stoppage, such as waiting time. In this case we have a "distinguished" in the manner of a sudden the Derby d'Epsom (1821) by Théodore Géricault, who, like de Chirico, "was born under the sign of Saturn" (which made it a melancholy)? The answer is no, because it seems, on the contrary, that the decisive moment - we remember, the distinguishing characteristic - in the paintings of de Chirico is detached and removed from normal life. It is concealed and discolored. The time is more than arrested, we're losing. While in the Epsom Derby for the distinction of imagination falls as we move towards the past or the future than at the time of representation, the paintings of de Chirico and especially those performed between 1910 and 1919, seem to be a black box in spite of their high light. The more we lose the family situation represented in the squares of Italy, who allegedly described the moments before and after the pictures, and most have focused on them, absorbed their true centers, the most enigmatic that they possess. And they are strangely resembling in their structure images "completion" (still the second Wickhoff) such as those of Giotto, in which we see also that the crucial moment is eclipsed. Really with de Chirico returns from this point of view the Middle Ages If the movement is the painter Géricault, Giotto and de Chirico the rest are painters. So I will look amazing if I suggest a deep affinity between de Chirico and Albert Einstein, the latter usually associated with terms like "revolutionary" and seen in relation to the modern spirit. The truth is that for the general theory of relativity makes no difference if the earth's turns on itself or whether the sun revolves around the earth. This explains Douglas R. Hofstader, and are ten points clear of the infallibility of the Pope in a popular explanation of the theory of relativity, Einstein proposed an ingenious reasoning on the reversal of events in a common family event such as running a train. He says that a passenger does not have to ascribe a jolt that he heard a "real" slow the train. The interpretation of the passenger could be the opposite: "The coach stop is where I'm sitting in the absence of motion. But (during braking) is a gravitational field (variable over time) that leads in the direction it is believed that the train is running. This creates an embankment which moves in the opposite direction, in order to land as a whole, and decreases the speed. This is because the gravitational field of the jolt felt by the observer. " This means that the sun as a body of reference, as well as want to Copernicus, or the earth, as Ptolemy's wants and most people in everyday life, is a matter of convenience but of the same physical value. "Rest" or "motion" are related concepts. There is no point or place in the world system that is superior to others on the basis of its total rest. In using this as an axiom of the two pillars of its construction, the so-called Einstein destroyed the ether hypothesis, which had predominated in the nineteenth century. According to this, electromagnetic waves, to transmit, requiring the ether, which was in absolute rest in space. He translated it into ghost with no option but to physical psychological. The laws of nature are the same in all reference circumscribed, whatever the state of motion. The term "state of motion" really shows that the theory of household are made static because otherwise it would be examined. The famous arrow of Zeno of Elea in the fifth century BC is in fact still even if we follow it in thought. It seems that the human mind is a great immobilizer pledged to keep possession of the important things that tend to fade. So I find similarities between Einstein, the thinker, and de Chirico, the painter of the rest. To date, developments in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century have often been associated with the Cubists, the Futurists, the raggisti and Duchamp, for their obvious dynamic and shareholder. In The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, a bulky book, Linda Henderson Darlymple no mention of de Chirico. At a superficial view, this is incomprehensible. It shows that FT Marinetti, "father" of the future, uncertain on the name to give to his daughter, went from "Dynamism" and "Electricity" and that, on the other hand, considered that the initial written Einstein's relativity led to the Title Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. That is a match with words, not in spirit.
Citing the example of the train braking, or low, respectively, of the embankment under the influence of a gravitational field, have already jumped beyond the general theory of relativity, which was completed in 1915-16. But let us take one step at a time starting from the beginning. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, published in September 1905 German monthly magazine "Annalen der Physik", the term "relativity theory" is not relevant. Two years later, Einstein uses it, rather casually, in another writing. And certainly, the first written can not be regarded as one in which it is exposed or has commenced the special theory of relativity, when up to that time there was talk only of the General Theory of Relativity. The difference between the two theories is that the special theory of relativity is connected to the frame of reference moving relative to each other at constant speed in directions unchanged and without rotation - the so-called inert Galilean frameworks of reference - and the General Theory of Relativity concerns accelerating coordinate systems relative to each other. Although Einstein is arresting and accelerating processing systems - "sets the imagination," as he once said (ie imagining the observer sitting on a disk in constant motion) - things are clearer with smooth movement. When he, in 1905, spoke of the "principle of relativity", that was already - in the sense mechanical or cinematic - well known to Galileo (who, inexplicably, could not have understood the difficulties this would cause electrodynamics). Galileo observed that an individual prisoner inside a large ship on a calm sea can not know whether the ship is stopped or is floating at a constant speed on the ground. We note that in the Epsom Derby of Géricault first chose a reference framework in which the horses were standing and moving fields. In the paintings of de Chirico, who are looking at, the artist, seemingly intent on emphasizing the principle that the rest is motion and movement and rest, in the second part integrates two frameworks: one based on the fact that the train is stopped and the 'more on the fact that the train is stopped. In the Gare de Montparnasse, 1914 (The Museum of Modern Art, JT Soby Bequest) seems as if de Chirico had added a third frame of reference, the steam locomotive. At least one would conclude that the critical pressure, standing up straight in the air, creates "gaps" in the painting, because the flags, on the contrary, waving in the wind. There is also a discontinuity in space, whereas the bold perspective, there is a discontinuity in style, whereas the pointillist manner of treating the sky, and there is a discontinuity of time, but the reason is not the steam: the wind is blowing at the same speed and in the same direction of the train. The assumption of discontinuity of the time was already implicit in the fact that he compared the images with the style of de Chirico "complement" of Giotto. So we must be careful when we speak of "time" performed by de Chirico. What now? Rises a question: is the same point of time that the two small figures standing in front of the Montparnasse train station and that of a passenger on the train? Their clocks are synchronized? It is precisely the same question posed by Einstein, who came to explain the special theory of relativity. He uses the same motif, the locomotive. Since the timing implies the simultaneity of their "shots" of two different clocks, you need a definition because of which we can determine whether or not it is possible that two events taking place at a great distance from each other to occur simultaneously. The quickest way to find out that there has been an event is a signal that travels at the speed of light - just a God can be known instantly and what lies beyond the physical realm (but was the basis of Newtonian physics). So Einstein called it: two events, such as two light strokes A and B, data simultaneously, if the observer is sitting right in the middle (M) between A and B calls A and B simultaneously. A, B and M are placed in the bottom line of the diagram, the line means the earth, the embankment and rails.
The top line indicates a long train moving at constant speed to the right. M 'is the center of the line between A and B on the train in motion. At the time, as witnessed by an observer on the ground, where the blows of light flying at points A and B simultaneously, M ' coincides with M. But what happens after? A passenger train sitting on the M 'moves towards the beam of light emitted by B and travels forward on the light emitted by A. So, he will see the first B, then A and then conclude that B happens before A. This he is entitled to the same observer on M when he confirmed the timing. It follows that there is a thing of absolute simultaneity. Each framework has its own time. A date has meaning only if we know the coordinate system to which it relates. In the case of paintings by de Chirico, the clock in the tower is the time for the tower and valid only for everything that moves relative to it.
If the clocks of the city of Paris and the traveler are not synchronized, or may work faster or slower than another. Through considerations that can not be demonstrated here, Einstein shows that a passenger on a train would be slower than the clock tower of its own and - according to the principle of relativity - the clock would slow the passenger in relation to the clock tower who was in front of the station! Furthermore, by measuring their commands, both came to the conclusion that the commands of the other are foreshortened in the direction of mutual movement. Time dilation and a glimpse of the axes, namely the relativity of space and time, the essence of the special theory of relativity, are used to solve a contradiction that was left without a satisfactory solution until 1905: the contradiction between the principle of relativity (as I said, already known to Galileo) and what might be called the principle of absolute, universal constant speed of light, in theory and experiment , irrefutably confirmed during the nineteenth century by Fizeau, Maxwell, Lorentz and others. The contradiction becomes obvious to common sense with the help of the following illustration: suppose a light beam aligned with the tracks facing forward like an arrow. The air was blown away. Light travels in a vacuum to its speed footnote on the ground. Now imagine a train running on rails at a constant speed of light in the same direction, but slower. It could be argued that the speed of the light beam for the wagon train and the speed of light first measured less than the speed of the train (just like the speed of any person walking on the train back to be subtracted from the train speed so to calculate the speed of this person in relation to the embankment). But it is not the case. The constancy of the speed of light remains intact, because going back to an initial framework of reference to another, an observer will have to apply special mathematical transformations (known as Lorentz transformations) that neutralize the difference originally planned. I would add that these expansions of the time and contraction of distances becomes noticeable, of course, only when the relative velocity approaches the figure of 186,000 miles per second. If an elementary particle was close to the rapidly accelerating Linear position to observe us, we are transformed in fact be very large, flat and timeless, just like a painting by de Chirico. To summarize, we can establish that trains and clocks play a decisive role in the iconography of the physics of Einstein and the Metaphysics of de Chirico. Picasso, with his eye for the essential, in the only comment that is attributed to the Italian colleague described him, as reported by James Thrall Soby, "a painter of railway stations." The illustrations are Einstein taken from his popular description of the theory of relativity. This booklet was published for the first time in 1917 and received wide circulation, especially after the spectacular test of its predictions with a solar eclipse occurred in West Africa in May 1919.
Therefore, one could argue that the inventions of the painter, in 1912-14 as the dates were totally independent from the imagination of science. But, apparently, the example of the railway is already written in the famous beginning of 1905, whose front pages are perfectly understandable by the general reader. It concerns the definition of the time and says: "We must bear in mind that all our judgments in which time has a part, are always judgments of simultaneous events. When I say, for example, 'That train arrives here at 7', it means roughly: The point marked by hand on my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events. "Einstein is not the only connection the German de Chirico. He studied at the Academy of Monaco from 1906 to 1910, he knew very well the German and read Goethe in the original. Böcklin He had particular admiration for Arnold and Max Klinger and loved deeply the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. He knew also the works of the philosopher Austrian Otto Weininger, Sex and Character, especially the strange and controversial doctrine of a young man who committed suicide shortly after publication of the book.
Around 1912-13 de Chirico began to define his paintings as "metaphysical." The initial impulse that led him to what remains a mystery. But it would not be surprised if he had heard of the studies published in 1912 by German classical philologist Werner Jaeger on the history and origins of Aristotle's Metaphysics. In the book's attention was drawn to the fact that the word "metaphysics" does not occur in Aristotle's metaphysics. The title was chosen two centuries later by the editor of the lectures of the philosopher, as he placed the writings on "after" Physics of Aristotle ("half TY Physik"). However, after the term was understood in a figurative sense, since the work involved the "first philosophy" and addressed to the first and last things "beyond" the physical world. De Chirico has a further connotation to "metaphysics." He is an artist, philosopher and poet who does not paint the "real", but "the thought", such thoughts congenial to Einstein. I suggest also to consider the "metaphysical painting" like a painting that goes "beyond the physical." This inclination for physics turns out to be consistent with an observation by Erwin Panofsky on the general differences between natural sciences and the humanities. Scientists are trying to detect the nature of the underlying laws consistent across different currents of the time. As Einstein once said: "The policy is for a moment, an equation is for eternity. "(We can understand the result of political gloom that has not been able to achieve immortality with books, films, etc.).. The historian, on the other hand, attempts to restore life to death to works of the past , thus assisting the artist, which sets the time in pictures like those of eternal de Chirico. It follows the similarity between the scientist and the artist, at least in their attitude with respect to time.
In making the theory special theory of relativity, we find another parallel in the works of de Chirico. At the end of 1915 or early 1916, after his return to Italy from Paris, they change character completely. In Ferrara, the artist was enlisted Infantry and placed in a military hospital, but he always had the time to paint and "to think a little 'art and things of the mind that have always been the sole purpose of our lives."
De Chirico had spent her childhood in Greece, where his father worked as a railway engineer, and had spent his student years at Monaco. In his native country he had lived a little. After his return in 1915 almost immediately stopped painting squares of Italy, which had been first his main subject, and perhaps even a hint nostalgic during his stay in Paris from 1911 to 1915. Since that time, he began to paint interiors. The world had moved from outside to inside, so to speak. Often the outside world is still present in a room like a kick reminiscent represented by a picture in a picture as in the magnificent interior with metaphysical lighthouse (1918). But this only serves to underline the real isolation of the room. The major Italian cities were already very quiet. Silence reigned over them, broken only occasionally by the frantic whistle of the locomotive showing the Doppler effect. These are hermetically sealed interior metaphysical. The air was already very thin in the streets. But there is no air inside. Were defined claustrophobic interiors and one is tempted to speak of a claustrophobic stage to a stage in consecution agoraphobic.
The same aspect can be found in the work of Einstein. In the explanation the special theory of relativity, he uses the trains running in a straight line at constant speed on an infinite plane. In his General Theory of Relativity, for a moment, returns to his imagining the situation of a train braking. Although de Chirico will be taken back to his urban scenes on a plot of complications increased. The key image of the original Einstein, however, is that of a "closed box-shaped room" by a rope attached to a hook outside is conducted in outer space somewhere not be specified at a speed uniformly accelerated. Each person (or object) within this container with no windows would be pressed "down" towards what might be called the "floor" and understand their situation as a result of the plane of constant gravity. Probably be surprised that the container will not fall down by gravity. But looking at the sky and noticing the hook, would conclude that the box is suspended by a rope. Therefore, the principle of relativity is valid not only with respect to Galilean frameworks of reference, but also with regard to accelerating frames of reference to each other. The equations of the theory of general relativity remain valid for any frame of reference, in any state of motion. After that, it becomes obvious that the space-continuous time on special relativity (the so-called Minkowski universe) which is Euclidean, becoming non-Euclidean in relation to general relativity, determines that all the hard coordinates (Cartesian) should be replaced by those defined by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. In the coordinate system of Gauss, the shortest connection between two points is a straight line but a curve called geodesic. This term refers to the Earth-made for triangulation, where some lines are curved due to the curvature of the earth.
The 'Universe as a whole "of the assumptions of Einstein also resembles a globe is a sphere which has a four-dimensional finite volume but no boundaries. Interior metaphysical de Chirico are full of rules, teams, French curves, measuring poles, maps and landmarks or points of detection, as the headlights. But the maps are of unknown countries, fantastic. The quiet presence of many engineering tools makes the disturbing scenes, to make his skin crawl, like a stormy sea breaking against the rocky coast and turning it stuck in his box at his side. Geometry and pictorial space are becoming increasingly disintegrated and indeterminate. On these enigmatic and oppressive rooms are going to lose the relationship. The common vision of the world is destroyed, but a clearer vision and broad rises from the ruins. The similarities between Einstein and de Chirico continued in the twenties when Einstein refuses to follow the path taken by physics indeterminacy and de Chirico refused to join the Surrealists, who enthusiastically praised his first term, the metaphysical painting, as its starting point. I can not prove with evidence of documents that there was, at one point in time and space, a connection between Einstein and de Chirico. On the other hand, no one can prove to me otherwise. And this especially because the painter is very reserved about the possible sources of his art, or any explanation "rational" it. However, a cross parallel with another Nobel Prize winner in physics brings out the figure of the first prize winner: In 1895, Professor Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in Würzburg, Germany, had discovered an unknown species of rays (he assumed) that could pass through books, wood and flesh, bones and lead to less extensive and not all of which could be mounted on photographic plates. For the unknown nature of these rays, he called them "X-ray." The news was immediate and dramatic effect on both the scientific world that at the general public.
Here we see a commercial X-ray output in Paris at the end of the century:
In 1919 de Chirico, dictating its final definition of metaphysical art, uses a comparison with this physical phenomenon: "... everything has two aspects: one normal and that we always see men in general, the other, the spectral or metaphysical who can not see that rare individuals in moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical abstraction, as certain bodies concealed by impervious material to the sun may not seem that under the power of artificial light such as X-rays would, for example. "The letter X a special meaning for de Chirico. At the beginning of metaphysical painting, circa 1911, at the age of 23 years, we see him move at ease in four languages: greek, Italian, German and French (he knew pretty well the Latin) . So he was aware of the fact that the sign designating the X in greek letter chi, which is the initial of his name. X (Chi) became his monogram. Thus, it appears in several paintings of the period, to a certain a independent self, and is much more than just a signature, it means that the painting is a portrait. This fantastic puzzle about the fate of The Enigma (1914). The picture is a remarkable anticipation of "shaped canvas". Its boundary is the lower half of an X. Bottom left, scored on a wall between the arches, there is a big X. Who is this in front of a big gauntlet, and "hand" in greek is "cheir". De Chirico play with these correlations not go so far to palmistry. While in this context, the X is pretty thin and schematic, it increases in plasticity in the work back, the child's language, created in 1916 in Ferrara. In one of those claustrophobic interiors, a brioche to X, supported and surrounded by unidentified objects that could be signs of an exercise chirography. The title seems rather strange. On the other hand, however, there is a language understandable to a child more than the cake? The brioche X is a specialty bakery in Ferrara, known worldwide for the quality of their bread. During the war, reached similar delights the quality of a mirage. But de Chirico also intended to allude to his childhood, even in its embryonic stage. And the reference here is the X chromosome, which is one of the two sex chromosomes, namely the one with character hermaphrodite. It seems that de Chirico represented a genetic code in the oven. Today I can not go into details in this respect, there is not time. And I do not have time to make a relationship between psychology and metaphysical painting. I wish however to point out that the child German psychologist William Stern, who wrote a book about a child's language, introduced in 1916 the concept of IQ, in conjunction with the American Termen Lewis, who worked in Stanford in the text of which was including problems in children of eight years in the making similar to the problems posed by some of the paintings of de Chirico. In German, I now speak of not wanting to run out of Athens, a German proverb in turn derived from a greek (Aristophanes used it in a comedy) and my dictionary I found the strange translation: "carrying coals to Newcastle, but vaguely suspect that could send off the road. A more credible would be equivalent to California did not want to bring knowledge to the wise or the intelligence of students at Stanford University. Where the product is abundant, it is not necessary to add extra doses. Let me conclude by stating: Einstein and de Chirico believed in a static and eternal universe. And in the same way that Einstein did not want to go all the way to find the last equation of eternity, according the theory of relativity with the principle of indeterminacy, as de Chirico refused to dissolve his personal problem. He merged his monogram Chi and the letter X, the symbol of an unknown factor, in a simple equation: I, de Chirico, are a mystery.
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