.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The present picture is part of a series of around twenty oils which Magritte executed in 1950 and 1951, all depicting objects either made of stone or turned into stone. He was fascinated by this state of petrification, which he saw as a visual analogue to natural disaster. As Hammacher has explained:
One can trace this preoccupation with a petrified world in all Magritte's works... Magritte did not regard petrifaction as a process, but as a kind of catastrophe, like that at Pompeii, when lava transfixed the world and brought all movement to a halt. (A.M. Hammacher, Magritte, London, 1974, p. 140)
La parole donne is one of two images of fossilized apples, both with the same title, that Magritte made in the second half of 1950. The apple was a motif that the artist had employed on numerous occasions throughout his career, painting it floating in the sky, wearing a mask, topping a human torso, and in other ways. Here, the apple has been enlarged to monumental proportions and turned to mottled gray stone, set down amidst a massive outcropping of rock with a cloud-filled sky visible beyond. The effect is eerie and enigmatic; as David Sylvester commented in the catalogue of the 1969 Magritte retrospective at the Tate Gallery, "La parole donne has the violence of an earthquake at the start of time" (exh. cat., op. cit., London, 1969, p. 12). Explaining the impact of Magritte's 1950s "Stone Age" pictures, Suzi Gablik has written:
[The] paintings are a systematic attempt to disrupt any dogmatic view of the physical world. By means of the interference of conceptual paradox, [Magritte] causes ordinary phenomena to inherit extraordinary and improbable conclusions... What happens in Magritte's paintings is, roughly speaking, the opposite of what the trained mind is accustomed to expect... (S. Gablik, Magritte, New York, 1970, pp. 112-114)
Enormous petrified apples re-appear in several other paintings by Magritte. In Les verres fums (lot ???), also from 1950, the apple is placed atop a stone pedestal, a galloping granite horse replacing one of its leaves; in two contemporaneous oils entitled Souvenir de voyage (Sylvester, nos. 735 and 736; Collection Farah Alexandra W. Ebrahimi and private collection), it is set first on a rock-strewn plateau, then in a fossilized fruit bowl before a craggy granite wall. In 1962 and 1963, Magritte executed another series of petrified images; a third version of La parole donne (Sylvester, no. 971; Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem) dates from this period, the apple's rocky mount now transformed into a barren lunar landscape.
One can trace this preoccupation with a petrified world in all Magritte's works... Magritte did not regard petrifaction as a process, but as a kind of catastrophe, like that at Pompeii, when lava transfixed the world and brought all movement to a halt. (A.M. Hammacher, Magritte, London, 1974, p. 140)
La parole donne is one of two images of fossilized apples, both with the same title, that Magritte made in the second half of 1950. The apple was a motif that the artist had employed on numerous occasions throughout his career, painting it floating in the sky, wearing a mask, topping a human torso, and in other ways. Here, the apple has been enlarged to monumental proportions and turned to mottled gray stone, set down amidst a massive outcropping of rock with a cloud-filled sky visible beyond. The effect is eerie and enigmatic; as David Sylvester commented in the catalogue of the 1969 Magritte retrospective at the Tate Gallery, "La parole donne has the violence of an earthquake at the start of time" (exh. cat., op. cit., London, 1969, p. 12). Explaining the impact of Magritte's 1950s "Stone Age" pictures, Suzi Gablik has written:
[The] paintings are a systematic attempt to disrupt any dogmatic view of the physical world. By means of the interference of conceptual paradox, [Magritte] causes ordinary phenomena to inherit extraordinary and improbable conclusions... What happens in Magritte's paintings is, roughly speaking, the opposite of what the trained mind is accustomed to expect... (S. Gablik, Magritte, New York, 1970, pp. 112-114)
Enormous petrified apples re-appear in several other paintings by Magritte. In Les verres fums (lot ???), also from 1950, the apple is placed atop a stone pedestal, a galloping granite horse replacing one of its leaves; in two contemporaneous oils entitled Souvenir de voyage (Sylvester, nos. 735 and 736; Collection Farah Alexandra W. Ebrahimi and private collection), it is set first on a rock-strewn plateau, then in a fossilized fruit bowl before a craggy granite wall. In 1962 and 1963, Magritte executed another series of petrified images; a third version of La parole donne (Sylvester, no. 971; Fondation Veranneman, Kruishoutem) dates from this period, the apple's rocky mount now transformed into a barren lunar landscape.