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Migraine and Visual Arts
| Author: Klaus Podoll | 23. March 2005 |
| Edited by: Klaus Podoll |
The Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico is more and more appreciated as one of the emblematic figures of 20th century art. He has developed the style of "metaphysical art" and is seen as one of the forerunners of surrealism. Whereas current interpretations of his work by art historians and art critics focus on the literary and philosophical sources of de Chirico's poetics, e.g. the writings from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the British neurologist G.N. Fuller and the art historian M.V. Gale suggested, in a paper published as early as 1988 in the British Medical Journal, that migraine with aura may have acted as a basis for several unusual and recurrent features of his "Pittura metafisica". According to Dr Fuller's recollection, "the collaboration arose because I shared a house with my sister and one of our lodgers (and now my brother in law) Matthew Gale was doing a PhD on de Chirico (he is now a curator at the Tate). I inevitably saw some of his pictures - and thought they looked like migraine aura and Matthew was able to confirm that de Chirico was indeed often ill - and reviewing his writings led us to the conclusion that he had migraine..." (Email to Klaus Podoll, May 28, 2005).
Reconsidering the notion of de Chirico's migraine aura as source of his artistic inspiration, Ubaldo Nicola and Klaus Podoll have systematically examined his published works as painter and writer, including his "Memoirs", the semi-autobiographical novels "Hebdomeros" and "Mister Dudron" and his collected essays. References to migraine aura symptoms were identified according to phenomenal similarities not only with clinical descriptions of such phenomena as established in neurological semeiology, but also with the paintings and drawings from the Migraine Art collection which currently consists of 562 pieces.
The available documents provided unexpectedly rich evidence for a diagnosis of migraine with aura, as summarized in the monograph "The aura of Giorgio de Chirico - Migraine Art and Metaphysical Painting".
Nicola & Podoll, L'aura di Giorgio de Chirico, 2003. © 2003 Mimesis Edizioni
As an expansion of Fuller' and Gale's previously reported findings, it was possible to document familiarity, childhood onset and a wide range of symptoms of de Chirico's migraine with aura as described in his writings. Blanke and Landis (2003) objected that the available evidence suggests a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) rather than migraine, but major criticisms can be raised against their selection and interpretation of data (Podoll and Nicola, 2004) and according to the present author's opinion they failed to demonstrate convincing links between the assumed diagnosis of TLE and de Chirico's metaphysical painting (Blanke and Landis, 2004).
Analysis of de Chirico's essays on his notion of "revelation" and his autobiographical report on the creation of his first metaphysical painting (The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, 1909) demonstrate that migraine aura phenomena − especially paramnesias (jamais and déjà vu) and visual phenomena - can be identified at the heart of the painter's creative process during the formative years of development of his unique style of metaphysical art.
Giorgio de Chirico, The enigma of an autumn afternoon, 1909. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007
A comparison of de Chirico's pictorial work with images drawn and painted by other migraine sufferers shows striking similarities which suggest headaches, photophobia, scotoma, visual hallucinations and illusions as well as body image disturbances like macrosomatognosia and out-of-body experiences as sources of his artistic inspiration.
(top) Giorgio de Chirico, Ritratto di Apollinaire, 1914. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007 (bottom) Migraine Art: Photophobia. © 2007
Migraine Action Association and Boehringer Ingelheim
(top) Giorgio de Chirico, Il bagnante solitario, 1934. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007 (bottom) Migraine Art: Visual aura with parallel zigzags. © 2007 Migraine Action Association and Boehringer Ingelheim
(top) Giorgio de Chirico, Sole sul
cavaletto, 1972. © VG
Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2007 (right) Migraine Art: Visual aura with radial symmetrical patterns. © 2007 Migraine Action Association and Boehringer Ingelheim