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Lot Essay
The dynamic nature of Magritte's oeuvre may be found in the artist's playful exploitation of human schemas regarding the possibilities and impossibilities of the natural world. Painting in an academic, linear, and matter-of-fact style, Magritte sought in his work to overthrow the viewer's sense of the familiar through the juxtaposition of paradoxical images. Les idées claires epitomizes the artist's unique desire to stage a permanent revolt against the ordinary.
Filled with whimsy, Magritte's paintings attempt to lend visibility to our subconscious thought, but the artist was adamant that he did not seek to convey any hidden symbolism in his work: "To equate my painting with symbolism, conscious or unconscious," Magritte insisted, "is to ignore its true nature. By asking, 'what does this mean?' they express a wish that everything be understandable. But if one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things" (in "Les Mots et les images," La Révolution Surréaliste, 15 December 1929; quoted in S. Gablik, Magritte, New York, 1985, p. 11).
Sarah Whitfield writes: "A boulder is a form suspended between the abstract and the figurative, the general and the specific: that is its mystery...it is an effective agent of silence, a quality often remarked upon in Magritte's work and one which he himself had recognized in de Chirico's" (in Magritte, exh. cat., South Bank Centre, London, 1992, no. 105). The present work clearly manifests the artist's constant desire to invoke paradox within the confines of a single composition. Refusing to deal with single, static identities, Magritte instead creates an image of duality and contradiction. In the present work, the laws of gravity have been entirely undermined as a heavy boulder, without fixed or final location, levitates before our very eyes.
Les idées claires is dated 1955, although David Sylvester speculates that it was painted in 1958 and deliberately misdated by the artist to evade terms of a contract with his dealer Alexander Iolas. It is closely related to several other works from the later year (S. 873, 884, 886, 894) which also reference this unsettling image of gravitational void. "Space, time, and matter are dramatized here in suspended animation," writes Harry Torczyner. "The force of gravity, which we dismiss as commonplace in our daily lives, becomes powerful and awesome here" (in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 154). Indeed, the boulder in this composition acquires an uncanny monumentality when released from the laws of physics we have come to accept as scientific fact.
"What happens in Magritte's paintings," writes Suzi Gablik, "is, roughly, speaking, the opposite of what the trained mind is accustomed to expect. His pictures disturb the elaborate compromise that exists between the mind and life" (in Magritte, New York, 1985, pp. 113-114).
Filled with whimsy, Magritte's paintings attempt to lend visibility to our subconscious thought, but the artist was adamant that he did not seek to convey any hidden symbolism in his work: "To equate my painting with symbolism, conscious or unconscious," Magritte insisted, "is to ignore its true nature. By asking, 'what does this mean?' they express a wish that everything be understandable. But if one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things" (in "Les Mots et les images," La Révolution Surréaliste, 15 December 1929; quoted in S. Gablik, Magritte, New York, 1985, p. 11).
Sarah Whitfield writes: "A boulder is a form suspended between the abstract and the figurative, the general and the specific: that is its mystery...it is an effective agent of silence, a quality often remarked upon in Magritte's work and one which he himself had recognized in de Chirico's" (in Magritte, exh. cat., South Bank Centre, London, 1992, no. 105). The present work clearly manifests the artist's constant desire to invoke paradox within the confines of a single composition. Refusing to deal with single, static identities, Magritte instead creates an image of duality and contradiction. In the present work, the laws of gravity have been entirely undermined as a heavy boulder, without fixed or final location, levitates before our very eyes.
Les idées claires is dated 1955, although David Sylvester speculates that it was painted in 1958 and deliberately misdated by the artist to evade terms of a contract with his dealer Alexander Iolas. It is closely related to several other works from the later year (S. 873, 884, 886, 894) which also reference this unsettling image of gravitational void. "Space, time, and matter are dramatized here in suspended animation," writes Harry Torczyner. "The force of gravity, which we dismiss as commonplace in our daily lives, becomes powerful and awesome here" (in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 154). Indeed, the boulder in this composition acquires an uncanny monumentality when released from the laws of physics we have come to accept as scientific fact.
"What happens in Magritte's paintings," writes Suzi Gablik, "is, roughly, speaking, the opposite of what the trained mind is accustomed to expect. His pictures disturb the elaborate compromise that exists between the mind and life" (in Magritte, New York, 1985, pp. 113-114).