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拍品专文
In November 1964, at the opening of the exhibition Magritte: Le sens propre, René Magritte was asked by the journalist Pierre Mazars about the preponderance of curtains in his most recent works. The artist looked at the paintings hanging on the walls, and replied, in his quintessentially enigmatic manner, “Yes… We are surrounded by curtains” (P. Mazars, “Magritte et l’objet,” in Le Figaro Littéraire, 19 November 1964; quoted in K. Rooney and E. Platter, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2018, p. 214). For Magritte, the curtain represented an intriguingly mysterious proposition, prized for its dual potential to reveal or conceal reality, to constrict our view, or open our eyes to hidden aspects of the world around us. Painted in 1960, La cour d’amour is one of a small series of paintings from the opening years of the decade in which the curtain plays a central role, allowing Magritte to investigate the poetic potential of this simple, familiar object, playing with the viewers’ perceptions and expectations in ever intriguing ways.
The curtain had been a perennial feature within Magritte’s art since his earliest Surrealist compositions from the mid-1920s, most often deployed as a framing device to the mysterious happenings and scenes that filled his canvases, or occasionally as a barrier or partition within the space. In many ways, these drapes had their roots in the traditions of art history, invoking the legendary competition between the Ancient Greek artists Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which the latter’s superior skill was revealed through his realistic painting of a curtain that was so life-like it fooled the other artist entirely. The legacy of this story continued to resonate with artists across the centuries, particularly through the Renaissance, with painters who sought to display their own mimetic mastery through the addition of trompe-l’oeil drapery to their canvases. During the Dutch Golden Age, for example the inclusion of this motif also referenced the popular practice among art collectors and patrons of the period to cover their precious paintings with a curtain, protecting them from dust and bright light, while also making the viewing experience an event, concealing the painting before revealing it in a dramatic flourish.
While in Magritte’s compositions the presence of the curtain typically lent the scene a certain theatricality, as if the objects and figures were taking part in a drama on the stage, in 1926 he began to set them free from their position as a framing device, allowing them to instead become towering, autonomous objects within his paintings. In Le monde poétique (Sylvester, no. 107; Private collection), for example, a pair of bright pink drapes appear unsupported on either side of the platform, the ambiguous material adopting the familiar silhouette and rippling folds of its own accord. In his 1942 painting Les Misanthropes (Sylvester, no. 511; Private collection), meanwhile, a cluster of these curtains become a domineering presence within the desolate, mist-filled landscape, enlarged to giant proportions and transformed into uncanny characters through the simple act of dislocation. At the dawn of the 1960s, the curtain once again became an important leitmotif for Magritte, featuring in a diverse range of contexts and situations, from the enveloping, cylindrical curves of Les mémoires d’un saint (Sylvester, no. 909; The Menil Collection, Houston), to the configuration of three contrasting flat and three-dimensional curtain forms, accompanied by a small grelot bell, in La Joconde (Sylvester, no. 922; Private collection).
In La cour d’amour, Magritte eschews any sense of the trompe-l’oeil effect, instead presenting us with two clearly flat panels cut into the distinctive shape of a draped curtain, which stand at the very center of the space. While one is filled with a realistic rendering of a rich red fabric, the folds following the contours of the panel as it is gathered together in a tie, the other presents an impossible view onto a cloud-filled, cerulean sky, as if the panel is in fact a window or a portal onto another landscape. Placed side by side, rather than as mirror opposites on either side of the space, Magritte accentuates the similarities and differences of the two panels, highlighting the manner in which they appear to have been created from the same schematic design, and yet transformed into two entirely different things by the artist’s hand. Playing with the viewer’s sense of depth, these two framed cut-outs introduce an intriguing impression of space within the scene, at once firmly rooted in the room, with its vivid, patterned wallpaper and wooden floor, and yet also suggesting another world beyond that which we can see.
Both panels are surrounded by chunky gold frames, recalling Magritte’s series of pictures from the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which small paintings were placed on the floor of an ordinary interior setting, conjuring unexpected visuals in the mind of the viewer through their combination or the artist’s playful use of language. For example, in Le palais de rideaux (Sylvester, no. 305; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) two matching heptagonal pictures are propped against the paneled wall of the artist’s Parisian apartment, each describing the essential beauty of the sky, one through soft blue tones, the other through the simple act of adding the word ciel to the panel in cursive script. In La cour d’amour, the framing of the curtains emphasizes their almost comical flatness as they stand, unsupported within the scene. Indeed, they appear more like pieces of interchangeable stage scenery, which can be moved and repositioned as needed, while the small crevices visible at the base of the diamond-patterned backdrop create the impression that it, too, is an impermanent feature within the space, a fake wall or perhaps another curtain. These details lend the composition an inherent strangeness, suggesting that nothing is as it may seem at first glance, each element simply another layer in a carefully constructed tableau, which together can create an impression of another time, another place, another world.
For Magritte, it was this essential magic of such objects and their familiar presence in the world around us, combined with the fallibility and complexity of our perceptions, the gaps in our understanding and reading of reality, that provided the essential fuel for his imagination. “In the images I paint, there is no question of either dream, escape or symbolism,” he explained. “My images are not substitutes for either sleeping or waking dreams. They do not give us the illusion of escaping from reality… I conceive painting as the art of juxtaposing colors in such a way that their effective aspect disappears and allows a poetic image to become visible. This image is the total description of a thought that unites—in a poetic order—familiar figures of the visible: skies, people, trees, mountains, furniture, stars, solids, inscriptions, etc.” (quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., 1977, p. 224).
The curtain had been a perennial feature within Magritte’s art since his earliest Surrealist compositions from the mid-1920s, most often deployed as a framing device to the mysterious happenings and scenes that filled his canvases, or occasionally as a barrier or partition within the space. In many ways, these drapes had their roots in the traditions of art history, invoking the legendary competition between the Ancient Greek artists Zeuxis and Parrhasius, in which the latter’s superior skill was revealed through his realistic painting of a curtain that was so life-like it fooled the other artist entirely. The legacy of this story continued to resonate with artists across the centuries, particularly through the Renaissance, with painters who sought to display their own mimetic mastery through the addition of trompe-l’oeil drapery to their canvases. During the Dutch Golden Age, for example the inclusion of this motif also referenced the popular practice among art collectors and patrons of the period to cover their precious paintings with a curtain, protecting them from dust and bright light, while also making the viewing experience an event, concealing the painting before revealing it in a dramatic flourish.
While in Magritte’s compositions the presence of the curtain typically lent the scene a certain theatricality, as if the objects and figures were taking part in a drama on the stage, in 1926 he began to set them free from their position as a framing device, allowing them to instead become towering, autonomous objects within his paintings. In Le monde poétique (Sylvester, no. 107; Private collection), for example, a pair of bright pink drapes appear unsupported on either side of the platform, the ambiguous material adopting the familiar silhouette and rippling folds of its own accord. In his 1942 painting Les Misanthropes (Sylvester, no. 511; Private collection), meanwhile, a cluster of these curtains become a domineering presence within the desolate, mist-filled landscape, enlarged to giant proportions and transformed into uncanny characters through the simple act of dislocation. At the dawn of the 1960s, the curtain once again became an important leitmotif for Magritte, featuring in a diverse range of contexts and situations, from the enveloping, cylindrical curves of Les mémoires d’un saint (Sylvester, no. 909; The Menil Collection, Houston), to the configuration of three contrasting flat and three-dimensional curtain forms, accompanied by a small grelot bell, in La Joconde (Sylvester, no. 922; Private collection).
In La cour d’amour, Magritte eschews any sense of the trompe-l’oeil effect, instead presenting us with two clearly flat panels cut into the distinctive shape of a draped curtain, which stand at the very center of the space. While one is filled with a realistic rendering of a rich red fabric, the folds following the contours of the panel as it is gathered together in a tie, the other presents an impossible view onto a cloud-filled, cerulean sky, as if the panel is in fact a window or a portal onto another landscape. Placed side by side, rather than as mirror opposites on either side of the space, Magritte accentuates the similarities and differences of the two panels, highlighting the manner in which they appear to have been created from the same schematic design, and yet transformed into two entirely different things by the artist’s hand. Playing with the viewer’s sense of depth, these two framed cut-outs introduce an intriguing impression of space within the scene, at once firmly rooted in the room, with its vivid, patterned wallpaper and wooden floor, and yet also suggesting another world beyond that which we can see.
Both panels are surrounded by chunky gold frames, recalling Magritte’s series of pictures from the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which small paintings were placed on the floor of an ordinary interior setting, conjuring unexpected visuals in the mind of the viewer through their combination or the artist’s playful use of language. For example, in Le palais de rideaux (Sylvester, no. 305; The Museum of Modern Art, New York) two matching heptagonal pictures are propped against the paneled wall of the artist’s Parisian apartment, each describing the essential beauty of the sky, one through soft blue tones, the other through the simple act of adding the word ciel to the panel in cursive script. In La cour d’amour, the framing of the curtains emphasizes their almost comical flatness as they stand, unsupported within the scene. Indeed, they appear more like pieces of interchangeable stage scenery, which can be moved and repositioned as needed, while the small crevices visible at the base of the diamond-patterned backdrop create the impression that it, too, is an impermanent feature within the space, a fake wall or perhaps another curtain. These details lend the composition an inherent strangeness, suggesting that nothing is as it may seem at first glance, each element simply another layer in a carefully constructed tableau, which together can create an impression of another time, another place, another world.
For Magritte, it was this essential magic of such objects and their familiar presence in the world around us, combined with the fallibility and complexity of our perceptions, the gaps in our understanding and reading of reality, that provided the essential fuel for his imagination. “In the images I paint, there is no question of either dream, escape or symbolism,” he explained. “My images are not substitutes for either sleeping or waking dreams. They do not give us the illusion of escaping from reality… I conceive painting as the art of juxtaposing colors in such a way that their effective aspect disappears and allows a poetic image to become visible. This image is the total description of a thought that unites—in a poetic order—familiar figures of the visible: skies, people, trees, mountains, furniture, stars, solids, inscriptions, etc.” (quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., 1977, p. 224).