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Lot Essay
Magritte began work on A la rencontre du plaisir by June 1950, when he enclosed a sketch of the image, said to be in progress, in a letter to Scutenaire. The canvas was completed by mid-August of that year and included in a shipment to the artist's dealer, Alexander Iolas. Haunting and mysterious, the picture depicts two bowler-hatted men before a spare but beautifully rendered landscape at sunset; in the very center of the landscape is a single grelot or harness bell. One of the two men stands immobile, his back to the viewer, his hands in his overcoat pockets; the other is shown in profile, walking toward the right, one arm cradling a mysterious, vase-shaped object. A red curtain is drawn across a portion of the landscape, as if the houses and trees in the distance were part of a stage set and the two men were actors in a play. The meaning of the image is eerily enigmatic: while the two figures and the realistically rendered backdrop lead us to expect a narrative, the painting staunchly resists literal explication.
As so often in Magritte's work, it is the very ambiguity of A la rencontre du plaisir which lends the image its evocative power. As Magritte explained in a letter to Andr Bosmans:
What we can see that delights us in a painted image becomes uninteresting if what we are shown through the image is encountered in reality, and the contrary too: what pleases us in reality, we are indifferent to in the image of this pleasing reality--if we don't confuse real and surreal, and surreal with subreal. (Quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., p. 109)
A la rencontre du plaisir is also significant as an anthology of pictorial problems which had preoccupied Magritte for years; its iconography is an inventive re-combination of elements originating in various earlier compositions. The bowler-hatted man, for instance, one of the most familiar elements of Magritte's oeuvre, first appears in Les rveries du promeneur solitaire of 1926 (Sylvester, no. 124; private collection). Magritte was fascinated by the expressive possibilities of this anonymous, affectless Everyman, and presented him in countless situations. There is often an aspect of self-portrait in Magritte's use of this character, reinforced in the case of A la rencontre du plaisir by a photograph showing a bowler-hatted Magritte posed in a landscape much like that of the painting (fig. 1).
The image of twilight is also a central one for Magritte. His celebrated series L'empire des lumires (see lot ???) explores the zone of mystery and transition which separates daylight and darkness. In the present work, Magritte paints the sky in subtle pinks and oranges which suggest the approach of nightfall.
The tree in the background of A la rencontre du plaisir also held special significance for Magritte. Trees appear in his very first Surrealist canvases of 1925 and 1926, and play a key role in some of his best known compositions of the 1950s and 1960s, including L'empire des lumires and Le seize septembre.
Finally, the grelot or harness bell in the midground of the present picture originates in a 1926 painting entitled Le gouffre argent (Sylvester, no. 87; private collection), in which eight bells float in a void seen through a hole in a wall. Magritte used this device over and over during the next three decades, enjoying the effect of placing an ordinary object in an unfamiliar setting; as he explained, "Our secret desire is for a change in the order of things, and it is appeased by the vision of a new order...the fate of an object in which we had no interest suddenly begins to disturb us."
(fig. 1) Magritte in Brussels, 1934.
As so often in Magritte's work, it is the very ambiguity of A la rencontre du plaisir which lends the image its evocative power. As Magritte explained in a letter to Andr Bosmans:
What we can see that delights us in a painted image becomes uninteresting if what we are shown through the image is encountered in reality, and the contrary too: what pleases us in reality, we are indifferent to in the image of this pleasing reality--if we don't confuse real and surreal, and surreal with subreal. (Quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., p. 109)
A la rencontre du plaisir is also significant as an anthology of pictorial problems which had preoccupied Magritte for years; its iconography is an inventive re-combination of elements originating in various earlier compositions. The bowler-hatted man, for instance, one of the most familiar elements of Magritte's oeuvre, first appears in Les rveries du promeneur solitaire of 1926 (Sylvester, no. 124; private collection). Magritte was fascinated by the expressive possibilities of this anonymous, affectless Everyman, and presented him in countless situations. There is often an aspect of self-portrait in Magritte's use of this character, reinforced in the case of A la rencontre du plaisir by a photograph showing a bowler-hatted Magritte posed in a landscape much like that of the painting (fig. 1).
The image of twilight is also a central one for Magritte. His celebrated series L'empire des lumires (see lot ???) explores the zone of mystery and transition which separates daylight and darkness. In the present work, Magritte paints the sky in subtle pinks and oranges which suggest the approach of nightfall.
The tree in the background of A la rencontre du plaisir also held special significance for Magritte. Trees appear in his very first Surrealist canvases of 1925 and 1926, and play a key role in some of his best known compositions of the 1950s and 1960s, including L'empire des lumires and Le seize septembre.
Finally, the grelot or harness bell in the midground of the present picture originates in a 1926 painting entitled Le gouffre argent (Sylvester, no. 87; private collection), in which eight bells float in a void seen through a hole in a wall. Magritte used this device over and over during the next three decades, enjoying the effect of placing an ordinary object in an unfamiliar setting; as he explained, "Our secret desire is for a change in the order of things, and it is appeased by the vision of a new order...the fate of an object in which we had no interest suddenly begins to disturb us."
(fig. 1) Magritte in Brussels, 1934.