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拍品专文
Painted circa 1963, this exquisitely rendered gouache features some of René Magritte’s most important motifs, all of which reappear in a number of his most significant works. Standing amid a crepuscular landscape, the stately natural form of the “leaf-tree” appears as a strange and surreal hybrid object, its branches in fact forming the shape of a large, single leaf. The “leaf-tree” is joined in this composition by a house, its windows glowing amid the twilit sky in a way that is reminiscent of the artist’s great L’empire des lumières series. One of Magritte’s famed bells completes this trio of protagonists, resting incongruously within the rural landscape. Together these elements, portrayed amid the dusky light, create a feeling of poetic enigma that defines the finest of the artist’s works.
The idea of the “leaf-tree” first entered Magritte’s art in La Géante of 1935 (Sylvester, no. 362), in which a sturdy tree trunk set within a verdant landscape is adorned not with a multitude of leaves, but with one single, over-sized leaf. At the time that he painted this oil, Magritte was in the midst of one of the most important periods of his career, during which he had embarked upon an artistic exploration to seek “solutions” to particular pictorial “problems” posed by various objects. In seeking, and subsequently revealing, the “elective affinities” that lay hidden between related objects, Magritte was able to render the most banal and ubiquitous elements in an extraordinary way. In July 1934, Magritte wrote to André Breton, “I am trying at the moment to discover what it is in a tree that belongs to it specifically but which would run counter to our concept of a tree” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 194). The answer he found was brilliant in its sheer simplicity—it was of course, the leaf. As he later explained in his lecture of 1938, “The tree, as the subject of a problem, became a large leaf the stem of which was a trunk directly planted in the ground” (“La Ligne de vie,” in G. Ollinger-Zinque and F. Leen, eds., René Magritte 1898-1967, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1998, p. 47).
In La recherche de l’absolu, Magritte developed the initial “leaf-tree” motif, stripping the tree of its leaves as if picturing it in its winter state. This iteration was first conceived in a series of three oil paintings dating from 1940, in which the same tree stands variously amid a twilight landscape, under a star-filled night sky, and in the morning (Sylvester, nos. 481-483). Magritte described these canvases to his friend, the Belgian playwright, Claude Spaak in a letter of 5 January 1941: “Among the recent canvases, there are three versions of ‘The search for the absolute,’ which is a leafless tree (in winter) but with branches that provide the shape of the leaf, a Leaf even so! One version takes place in the evening with a setting sun, another in the morning with a white sphere on the horizon, and the third shows this great, self-willed leaf rising against a starry sky” (quoted in op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 282). Magritte was clearly pleased with this new conception, continuing to Spaak, “These researches have allowed me to produce three very pure pictures, with which you would have been very pleased, I think” (ibid.). The present gouache differs from its earlier predecessors thanks to the addition of the silhouette of the house with lighted windows. This motif first appeared in the 1963 oil, La fin du monde (Sylvester, no. 980) and another gouache of the same year, Les signes de soir (Sylvester, no. 1536).
The title of the present gouache comes from the novel, La recherche de l’absolu by Honoré de Balzac, which portrays the destructive effects of one man’s obsession with alchemy and a quest for absolute truth. Magritte often took inspiration from literature, film and music when creating with titles for his canvases, and he also invited suggestions from friends such as the writers Paul Nougé and Louis Scutenaire, who is thought to have contributed the title for the present work. As in many of Magritte’s paintings after 1930, the title has a tenuous, indirect or seemingly incongruous relationship with the imagery, through which the artist invites the viewer to build associations on their own.
The idea of the “leaf-tree” first entered Magritte’s art in La Géante of 1935 (Sylvester, no. 362), in which a sturdy tree trunk set within a verdant landscape is adorned not with a multitude of leaves, but with one single, over-sized leaf. At the time that he painted this oil, Magritte was in the midst of one of the most important periods of his career, during which he had embarked upon an artistic exploration to seek “solutions” to particular pictorial “problems” posed by various objects. In seeking, and subsequently revealing, the “elective affinities” that lay hidden between related objects, Magritte was able to render the most banal and ubiquitous elements in an extraordinary way. In July 1934, Magritte wrote to André Breton, “I am trying at the moment to discover what it is in a tree that belongs to it specifically but which would run counter to our concept of a tree” (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 194). The answer he found was brilliant in its sheer simplicity—it was of course, the leaf. As he later explained in his lecture of 1938, “The tree, as the subject of a problem, became a large leaf the stem of which was a trunk directly planted in the ground” (“La Ligne de vie,” in G. Ollinger-Zinque and F. Leen, eds., René Magritte 1898-1967, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1998, p. 47).
In La recherche de l’absolu, Magritte developed the initial “leaf-tree” motif, stripping the tree of its leaves as if picturing it in its winter state. This iteration was first conceived in a series of three oil paintings dating from 1940, in which the same tree stands variously amid a twilight landscape, under a star-filled night sky, and in the morning (Sylvester, nos. 481-483). Magritte described these canvases to his friend, the Belgian playwright, Claude Spaak in a letter of 5 January 1941: “Among the recent canvases, there are three versions of ‘The search for the absolute,’ which is a leafless tree (in winter) but with branches that provide the shape of the leaf, a Leaf even so! One version takes place in the evening with a setting sun, another in the morning with a white sphere on the horizon, and the third shows this great, self-willed leaf rising against a starry sky” (quoted in op. cit., 1993, vol. II, p. 282). Magritte was clearly pleased with this new conception, continuing to Spaak, “These researches have allowed me to produce three very pure pictures, with which you would have been very pleased, I think” (ibid.). The present gouache differs from its earlier predecessors thanks to the addition of the silhouette of the house with lighted windows. This motif first appeared in the 1963 oil, La fin du monde (Sylvester, no. 980) and another gouache of the same year, Les signes de soir (Sylvester, no. 1536).
The title of the present gouache comes from the novel, La recherche de l’absolu by Honoré de Balzac, which portrays the destructive effects of one man’s obsession with alchemy and a quest for absolute truth. Magritte often took inspiration from literature, film and music when creating with titles for his canvases, and he also invited suggestions from friends such as the writers Paul Nougé and Louis Scutenaire, who is thought to have contributed the title for the present work. As in many of Magritte’s paintings after 1930, the title has a tenuous, indirect or seemingly incongruous relationship with the imagery, through which the artist invites the viewer to build associations on their own.