Problematizing Enigma Andre Breton declared that "all modern myth that is still evolving relies in its origin on the two nearly inseperable bodies of work of Alberto Savinio and giorgio De Chirico". This statement by the promoter and dictator of the french Surrealist movement resounds heavily throughout the "The Art of Enigma". Keala Jewell writes a book of interdisciplinary scope that brings together Giorgio De Chirico and Alberto Savinio, the two De Chirico brothers, the latter adopted a different surname for reasons which we have yet to fully decipher. The two were not only painters but writers and however much they were associated with the surrealist movement of French flavour they retained a dialogue with tradition that qualified them both as distinctively metaphysical and Nietzschean. Keala Jewell undertakes a task that opens opportunitites and scours lacunae left unengaged by most scholars of Giorgio's paintings. Their literary output has yet to receive proper attention, and in part that is because of their discordant practice within the surrealist vein. This study does much to reassess and safegurad a reputation still in its infancy, and presses unto a vexed symbolism that leaves more doubt than questions. The scholarship of the work is accessible and thorough, she takes the reader through this journey with careful steps never taking anything for granted, a quality that is effective, but may seem cumbersome to a more demanding audience. Her political description of fascist Italy is static and confined by a sense of historical morphology dependent on the critical output of Italian scholarship leaving the reader in a void when attempting to acquire a thorough understading of their cultural relevancy. Her definition critical appeal towards a modernism and its antimoodern revision is fashioned after Alain Touraine' s Critique de la Modernite', which situated modernity as an ideological apparatus instantiated in accordance with a faith in reason and its Enlightenment assmiliations. This is unfortunate because the web of symbolism is professed through such corrective lenses and Keala Jewell's postmodern prognosis is deficient and simplistic. The insights provided both in readings of their literary works and pictorial imaginings are substantial and worthy of patience but the characterization of De Chirico's artistic sensibility is treated with a heavy blueprint that fails to frame the melancholy ambiguity while belabouring its enigmatic exfoliation of traditional modes of cultural representation. His late reiterations of a singular theme are faulted as affected by indolence and stigmatized as in a state of parlysis. I care not to argue otherwise, but more should have been provided to buttress the vogue of the claims. The author's prowess is more readily celebrated when she undertakes to read Savinio's oeuvre, especially his fantastical literature, where fabled liminal beings people a metaphysical rhythm of a captivating cultural personality. Her sutures about the fragmentary spasmodic mythology of Savinio is a rare treat, but one that seems to be a foreground to a supernumerary backdrop where the more famous brother's Hebdomeros is assessed structurally without ever allowing for the resonance of exile to be part and parcel of her description of the topology and morphology of the dramatic sedimentation. The illusive postmetaphysical horizons that mark his art are discussed with intelligence, but once again his relationship with the sea, and by comparative energy with land, is only alluded to in hints and whispers and never brought to the fore in favor of more marginal markers that buoy his poetics. I venture to say it is a work of delectable authenticity and one that defies the boundaries and concomitant language of critical practices academics have ascribed to the discipline of art and literary criticism alike. However the author's struggles with psychoanalytical allocations and the economy of mythopoetic ideals is never brought to stand underneath the head of a fraternal matrix. She attempts to access a dialogue and a discursive field she never satisfactorily explored. The reproductions in the book are of high quality and all the references to the Italian are in dual tone, and admirably translated. One need not be acquainted with the brothers' literature, and Keala Jewell assumes as much, which frankly I think is a shame, specifically in reference to her convincing and intuitive read of Savinio's literary output, which to my knowledge ranks as one of the best this side of Europe. An informative read that will stand the test of time, but one that fails to illuminate the politics of modernity it seeks to chart.
Anything Goes Trivia
Last Kiss
Megaton Man
Trevor
