If you are unable to come to UMMA in person due to illness, quarantine, etc., you can choose a work from this set of surrealist and surrealist-adjacent pieces from the UMMA collection. 
59 Items in this Learning Collection
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Copyright
All Rights Reserved ()

The Archeologists IV (Gli Archeologi IV); Plate VI from the suite "Metamorphosis" (Metamorphosis is underlined)

Accession Number
1948/1.54

Title
The Archeologists IV (Gli Archeologi IV); Plate VI from the suite "Metamorphosis" (Metamorphosis is underlined)

Artist(s)
Giorgio de Chirico

Artist Nationality
Italian (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
1929

Medium & Support
color lithograph on paper

Dimensions
19 ¾ in x 15 ⅝ in (50.17 cm x 39.69 cm);28 1/16 in x 22 1/16 in (71.28 cm x 56.04 cm);19 15/16 in x 15 11/16 in (50.64 cm x 39.85 cm);15 4/5 in x 11 ⅞ in (40.16 cm x 30.16 cm)

Credit Line
Museum Purchase

Label copy
The idea of the faceless mannequin in the art of de Chirico has its origins in a poem of 1913 by the French poet Apollinaire and in a play of 1914 by the artist’s brother Alberto Savinio, about a "man without voice, eyes, or face." A blend of the human and the nonhuman, this enigmatic figure suggested the revelatory function of the artist, poet, or philosopher. Ultimately, this image came to stand for the human condition in the modern age, and was taken up by diverse artists, Surrealist and otherwise.
In de Chirico’s work the archeologist is a variant of the mannequin theme, and this figure occurs in pairs. As seen in the present print, the archeologists’ bodies are filled with objects—architectural ruins, heraldic shields, snippets of natural scenery—to suggest the collective memory that each individual must interpret. This lithograph is similar to a painting, now in Milan, that the artist executed three years earlier.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998

Primary Object Classification
Print

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Ruins
Surrealism
automaton
heraldic shield
mannequins (costume equipment)
modern and contemporary art

7 Related Resources

Monsters
(Part of 4 Learning Collections)
Robots and Other Automata
(Part of 9 Learning Collections)
Surrealism
(Part of 3 Learning Collections)
Zombies, Skeletons, and the Undead
(Part of 13 Learning Collections)

& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved