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拍品专文
In a letter to Claude Spaak written during the opening days of 1941, René Magritte outlined the principle idea that had been driving his most recent work: “it is in short the ever more rigorous search for what, in my view, is the essential element in art: purity and precision in the image of mystery which becomes decisive through being shorn of everything incidental or accidental” (quoted in S. Whitfield, Magritte, exh. cat., The Hayward Gallery, London, 1992, no. 84). Created in 1945, shortly after the liberation of Brussels at the end of the Second World War, La Mémoire investigates this concept, exploring a theme which the artist found himself drawn back to on several occasions during the turbulent 1940s—the surprising appearance of a bleeding wound on the smooth, serene face of a plaster sculpture. Blurring the boundaries between inanimate object and living being, this simple intervention transformed the bust into a disquieting motif, infusing even the most banal, innocuous scene with a startling note of violence and the unexpected.
This life-like bust, with its elegant features and coiffed hairstyle, first appeared in Magritte’s painterly oeuvre in the 1941 composition Les eaux profondes (Sylvester, no. 491; Private collection). Sporting a stylish black coat and gloves, while an enormous bird of prey silently stares at its profile, the figure appeared to be a mysterious, ambiguous mix of statue and flesh. The sculptural element was directly modeled from a plaster cast of an unknown, Neo-Classical bust, several of which the artist purchased from the Maison Berger for his personal collection of objects. At some point in 1942, Magritte took one of these plasters and deliberately disturbed its pure white surface, adding a large, dramatic bloodstain to one side of the face. Originating from an invisible wound at the temple, the garish mark partially covered one eye and the majority of its cheek, dripping downwards in thick rivulets to the jawline. Known only from a photograph taken by Marcel Mariën in 1943, which he titled Au temps de la mémoire, this original altered plaster cast appears to have been lost or destroyed shortly after its creation, but may have provided the direct inspiration for the artist’s first painted versions of the bleeding bust, such as La Mémoire (Sylvester, no. 505; Private collection). The motif would become an important recurring subject in Magritte’s art over the ensuing years, appearing in various configurations and contexts, the shape and size of the bloodstain altering from one work to the next, while the rest of the face remained perfectly unblemished.
In an interview Magritte gave in 1962, he spoke at length about the relationship between the subjects and the titles of his works, making specific reference to the La Mémoire paintings: “The title is related to the painted figures in the same way that the figures are related to each other. The figures are brought together in an order that invokes mystery. The title is joined to the painted image according to the same order. For instance, the picture La Mémoire shows a plaster face with a bloodstain on it. When I gave the picture the title, I felt they went well together... when I painted the picture La Mémoire I wasn’t thinking about what I’m going to say now. I only thought about harmonizing the image and the title that names the image. Consequently, the picture is not the illustration of the following ideas. When we say the word ‘memory,’ we see that it corresponds to the image of a human head. If memory can take up space, it can only be inside the head. Then the bloodstain may suggest to us that the person whose face we can see is the victim of a fatal accident. Lastly, it’s a question of an event in the past that remains present in our minds thanks to the memory” (J. Walravens, “Ontmoeting met René Magritte,” in De Vlaamse Gids, Antwerp, November 1962; in K. Rooney and E. Platter, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2016, p. 201).
As so often in Magritte’s work, the most potent source of inspiration for the La Mémoire paintings lay in the work of Giorgio de Chirico and in particular, the Italian artist’s famous 1914 picture Le chant d’amour. It was this painting, with its strange juxtaposition of a marble bust, a ball and a surgeon’s glove set in an urban landscape, that had sparked an artistic epiphany for Magritte when he first encountered it in the summer of 1923. Describing the impact of De Chirico’s strange, uncanny worlds, he wrote: “This triumphant poetry replaced the stereotyped effects of traditional painting. It represented a complete break with the mental habits peculiar to artists who are prisoners of talent, virtuosity and all the little aesthetic specialties. It was a new vision through which the spectator might recognize his own isolation and hear the silence of the world” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 71). Though it would take a full two years for the artist to process this revelatory experience, it fundamentally re-orientated Magritte’s painterly style, instilling his work with a feverish new energy that lead him to abandon the cubo-futurist vocabulary which had dominated his painting up to this point, and instead develop the disjointed and surreal visual world that would become his artistic trademark.
In La Mémoire, Magritte’s enduring fascination with De Chirico’s mysterious composition is clearly visible, memories of this revelatory work continuing to shape and inspire his mature Surrealist vision. Here, the artist explores a deceptively simple configuration of objects, positioning the injured sculpture alongside a glass of water and a single apple in a plain interior, the walls and table captured in subtle shades of cream, beige and gray. Rather than appearing as a simple still-life scene, however, Magritte imbues the composition with a heightened sense of the uncanny by allowing the sculpted head to appear weightless—this is the only iteration of the subject in which the bust is suspended in midair, floating above the table-top. As such, the painting appears to echo Le chant d’amour, in which the classical bust is placed half-way up a partition wall, anchored by an unknown force. In La Mémoire, the lifelike appearance of the sculpture combined with its distinct three-dimensionality generates a strange, ghostly atmosphere, as if the disembodied head is an apparition that has suddenly infiltrated this mundane, everyday moment.
In December 1945, La Mémoire was reproduced on the front page of the Brussels communist weekly Clarté, with the caption “one of the superb pictures you can win in our great house tombola” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 353). Magritte had formally joined the Belgian Communist Party in September of that year, embracing the revived spirit of political activity and freedom sweeping through Brussels following the end of the Second World War. As the artist explained: “Nougé and I thought we would be able, from within, to guide the artistic and cultural tendencies of the [Communist] Party in a direction more in keeping with our deep aspirations. We therefore attended the meetings of a section specializing in problems relating to the Fine Arts and Literature” (quoted in ibid., p. 113). Magritte donated La Mémoire to the tombola, or raffle, which had been organized to mark the exhibition Oeuvres offertes par l’Amicale des Arts plastiques, at the Galerie L’Ecrin d’art.
It is not known who the lucky winner in the tombola was—La Mémoire remained hidden in a private collection for more than twenty years following the raffle, until it resurfaced on the art market in 1968. However, Magritte’s affiliation with the Communist Party came to a swift end. “I was very quickly disillusioned…” he recalled. “We were talking to deaf ears. I was asked to submit one or two proposals for posters. They were all rejected. Conformism was as blatant in this milieu as in the most narrow-minded sections of the bourgeoisie. After a few months, I stopped attending and, from then on, I had no further relationship with the Party. There was no exclusion or break, but, on my side, total disaffection and permanent estrangement” (quoted in ibid., p. 116).
This life-like bust, with its elegant features and coiffed hairstyle, first appeared in Magritte’s painterly oeuvre in the 1941 composition Les eaux profondes (Sylvester, no. 491; Private collection). Sporting a stylish black coat and gloves, while an enormous bird of prey silently stares at its profile, the figure appeared to be a mysterious, ambiguous mix of statue and flesh. The sculptural element was directly modeled from a plaster cast of an unknown, Neo-Classical bust, several of which the artist purchased from the Maison Berger for his personal collection of objects. At some point in 1942, Magritte took one of these plasters and deliberately disturbed its pure white surface, adding a large, dramatic bloodstain to one side of the face. Originating from an invisible wound at the temple, the garish mark partially covered one eye and the majority of its cheek, dripping downwards in thick rivulets to the jawline. Known only from a photograph taken by Marcel Mariën in 1943, which he titled Au temps de la mémoire, this original altered plaster cast appears to have been lost or destroyed shortly after its creation, but may have provided the direct inspiration for the artist’s first painted versions of the bleeding bust, such as La Mémoire (Sylvester, no. 505; Private collection). The motif would become an important recurring subject in Magritte’s art over the ensuing years, appearing in various configurations and contexts, the shape and size of the bloodstain altering from one work to the next, while the rest of the face remained perfectly unblemished.
In an interview Magritte gave in 1962, he spoke at length about the relationship between the subjects and the titles of his works, making specific reference to the La Mémoire paintings: “The title is related to the painted figures in the same way that the figures are related to each other. The figures are brought together in an order that invokes mystery. The title is joined to the painted image according to the same order. For instance, the picture La Mémoire shows a plaster face with a bloodstain on it. When I gave the picture the title, I felt they went well together... when I painted the picture La Mémoire I wasn’t thinking about what I’m going to say now. I only thought about harmonizing the image and the title that names the image. Consequently, the picture is not the illustration of the following ideas. When we say the word ‘memory,’ we see that it corresponds to the image of a human head. If memory can take up space, it can only be inside the head. Then the bloodstain may suggest to us that the person whose face we can see is the victim of a fatal accident. Lastly, it’s a question of an event in the past that remains present in our minds thanks to the memory” (J. Walravens, “Ontmoeting met René Magritte,” in De Vlaamse Gids, Antwerp, November 1962; in K. Rooney and E. Platter, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2016, p. 201).
As so often in Magritte’s work, the most potent source of inspiration for the La Mémoire paintings lay in the work of Giorgio de Chirico and in particular, the Italian artist’s famous 1914 picture Le chant d’amour. It was this painting, with its strange juxtaposition of a marble bust, a ball and a surgeon’s glove set in an urban landscape, that had sparked an artistic epiphany for Magritte when he first encountered it in the summer of 1923. Describing the impact of De Chirico’s strange, uncanny worlds, he wrote: “This triumphant poetry replaced the stereotyped effects of traditional painting. It represented a complete break with the mental habits peculiar to artists who are prisoners of talent, virtuosity and all the little aesthetic specialties. It was a new vision through which the spectator might recognize his own isolation and hear the silence of the world” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 71). Though it would take a full two years for the artist to process this revelatory experience, it fundamentally re-orientated Magritte’s painterly style, instilling his work with a feverish new energy that lead him to abandon the cubo-futurist vocabulary which had dominated his painting up to this point, and instead develop the disjointed and surreal visual world that would become his artistic trademark.
In La Mémoire, Magritte’s enduring fascination with De Chirico’s mysterious composition is clearly visible, memories of this revelatory work continuing to shape and inspire his mature Surrealist vision. Here, the artist explores a deceptively simple configuration of objects, positioning the injured sculpture alongside a glass of water and a single apple in a plain interior, the walls and table captured in subtle shades of cream, beige and gray. Rather than appearing as a simple still-life scene, however, Magritte imbues the composition with a heightened sense of the uncanny by allowing the sculpted head to appear weightless—this is the only iteration of the subject in which the bust is suspended in midair, floating above the table-top. As such, the painting appears to echo Le chant d’amour, in which the classical bust is placed half-way up a partition wall, anchored by an unknown force. In La Mémoire, the lifelike appearance of the sculpture combined with its distinct three-dimensionality generates a strange, ghostly atmosphere, as if the disembodied head is an apparition that has suddenly infiltrated this mundane, everyday moment.
In December 1945, La Mémoire was reproduced on the front page of the Brussels communist weekly Clarté, with the caption “one of the superb pictures you can win in our great house tombola” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 353). Magritte had formally joined the Belgian Communist Party in September of that year, embracing the revived spirit of political activity and freedom sweeping through Brussels following the end of the Second World War. As the artist explained: “Nougé and I thought we would be able, from within, to guide the artistic and cultural tendencies of the [Communist] Party in a direction more in keeping with our deep aspirations. We therefore attended the meetings of a section specializing in problems relating to the Fine Arts and Literature” (quoted in ibid., p. 113). Magritte donated La Mémoire to the tombola, or raffle, which had been organized to mark the exhibition Oeuvres offertes par l’Amicale des Arts plastiques, at the Galerie L’Ecrin d’art.
It is not known who the lucky winner in the tombola was—La Mémoire remained hidden in a private collection for more than twenty years following the raffle, until it resurfaced on the art market in 1968. However, Magritte’s affiliation with the Communist Party came to a swift end. “I was very quickly disillusioned…” he recalled. “We were talking to deaf ears. I was asked to submit one or two proposals for posters. They were all rejected. Conformism was as blatant in this milieu as in the most narrow-minded sections of the bourgeoisie. After a few months, I stopped attending and, from then on, I had no further relationship with the Party. There was no exclusion or break, but, on my side, total disaffection and permanent estrangement” (quoted in ibid., p. 116).