This past spring, media outlets of every kind published photos and videos of eerily empty public spaces in cities like Beijing, New York, Milan, Paris, and Seoul, cities not known for their lack of street life. At least in the case of Seoul, where I live, the depopulated image was a bit of an exaggeration, but taken as a whole, these stunned visual dispatches from around the world reflected a real and sudden change in urban life caused by this year’s coronavirus pandemic. They also got us thinking, not just about our cities but about the built environment, and even human civilization, in general. Life, as often, had imitated art: specifically, it had imitated the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, the founder of the Metaphysical art movement.

“In 1909, de Chirico was sitting on a bench in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, recovering from an intestinal illness, when all of a sudden he had a profound experience.” So says Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter, in his new video essay “When the World Became a de Chirico Painting.” […]

Continue reading: https://www.openculture.com/2020/12/when-our-world-became-a-de-chirico-painting.html