6 - Le piazze d’Italia : De Chirico’s Prophetic Vision of Public Space in Destination Italy

Summary

Abstract

Inspired by a 1910 experience of Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Giorgio de Chirico began in 1912 to paint iterations of his Piazza d’Italia urban landscapes, reworking across decades their uncanny elements. While his art and theories of urban space have been much discussed within the context of modernity, tourism as an aspect of modernity has received little attention. In conversation with recent tourist theory, this chapter analyzes de Chirico’s multiple perspectives, unnatural light/shadow, and overwhelming sense of timelessness, objectification and alienation, through the lens of tourism, as it has forced the reification of Italian public space, and, in turn, suffocated the piazza to the point of an apocalyptic collapse of presence.

Keywords: de Chirico; mass tourism; Metaphysical art; Modernism; tourist studies

According to Roland Barthes, tour-guide books present destinations as an “uninhabited world” where “the human life of a country disappears to the exclusive benefit of its monuments.” A consequential choice, he argues, as it abstracts the tourist site from the “real” place, which “exists in time” (emphasis his). The portrayal of tourist destinations, Barthes goes on, suppresses “the reality of the land and that of its people, it accounts for nothing of the present, that is, nothing historical, and as a consequence, the monuments themselves become undecipherable, therefore senseless.” Many scholars since Barthes have argued that such tourist expectations, of an empty and timeless space purified of its mundane daily uses and local significance, have had concrete and lasting effects on physical spaces, particularly in cities. Heritage management expert, Britt Baillie, for example, sees in heritage sites like Italy’s art cities “the ultimate reduction of the dimensionality of time,” and cultural-heritage scholar, Ilaria Agostini, states that the Italian città storica has experienced an “obliterazione” and, as a result, is “esangue per l’esodo di abitanti e di attività.” Cultural economist, Pier Luigi Sacco, argues that “La città si trasformerà in un fondale per foto ricordo, quando i negozi chiudono, i tessuti turistici della città si trasformano in desolate città fantasma, e finiscono per assomigliare a quei ‘non luoghi’.”