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拍品專文
Le trou dans le mur (The Hole in the Wall) is a large and imposing work that powerfully asserts the disquiet of Magritte's unique and mysterious view of the world through the poetic transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Although dated by Magritte on the back of the canvas as painted in 1956, it is believed that this date was in fact fabricated by the artist in order to get round the terms of his contract with his dealer Iolas and that the work was actually executed in 1958. As David Sylvester has pointed out in the catalogue raisonn of the artist's work, the first mention of Le trou dans le mur is in a letter from Harry Torczyner dated 31 August 1959 in which Torczyner enquires of Magritte, "I have learnt that a new gallery the Staempfli Gallery is offering an important Magritte for sale. The Hole in the Wall. Where did he get it from?" As David Sylvester has pointed out, it is highly unlikely that Magritte would have kept such a large and important work out of sight for over two years. In addition, the deliberately vague tone of Magritte's reply to Torczyner in which he suggests that this work dates from 1955 is also an indication that in this matter Magritte was being economical with the truth.
Depicting a large granite rock resting on wooden floorboards overlooking the ocean, Le trou dans le mur belongs to a series of remarkable paintings in which Magritte disrupts the viewer's sense of space and material in a manner not dissimilar to the way in which Einstein's theory of relativity upsets the absolutes of Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry.
Magritte's rock has the presence and substance normally allocated to the central human subjects in painting's as Manet's Le Balcon or Matisse's Woman with a Parasol, both of which seem to have inspired Magritte's composition.
Le trou dans le mur relates closely to the famous Le chateau des Pyrnes, (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem), painted soon after in 1959. But whereas the latter's boulder is shown levitating in mid-air, the large rock in the present painting is silhouetted against an airy sky and a calm sea, resting on floorboards which in reality would be unable to support its immense weight. This lends the image an air of ambiguity and a sense of the implausible that messes with conventional notions of scale, weight and place.
Through the smallest of discrepencies in our conventional view of the world, the bizarre location of this enormous rock pierces a hole in the empirical view of the world as propounded by Newton in a way that is reinforced by the title of the work. As the Zen teacher, D.T. Suzuki has observed, it is only when one has passed through to an understanding of how the marvellous, improbable and extraordinary are present within the ordinary and the commonplace that a single hair of the tortoise begins to weigh seven pounds and an event of one thousand years ago becomes a living experience of this very moment.
In the present work Magritte's remarkable command of the visual poetry of the object conjures a similar sense of the simultaneity of all phemomena within a magical and infinite universe. Using the conceptual paradox and visual shock of this giant stone set against the sky and the ocean, he evokes a powerful sense of the sublimity and mystery of the universe. He demonstrates that many curious and strange realities can coexist and that these wonders can be perceived if one looks through 'the hole in the wall'.
Although dated by Magritte on the back of the canvas as painted in 1956, it is believed that this date was in fact fabricated by the artist in order to get round the terms of his contract with his dealer Iolas and that the work was actually executed in 1958. As David Sylvester has pointed out in the catalogue raisonn of the artist's work, the first mention of Le trou dans le mur is in a letter from Harry Torczyner dated 31 August 1959 in which Torczyner enquires of Magritte, "I have learnt that a new gallery the Staempfli Gallery is offering an important Magritte for sale. The Hole in the Wall. Where did he get it from?" As David Sylvester has pointed out, it is highly unlikely that Magritte would have kept such a large and important work out of sight for over two years. In addition, the deliberately vague tone of Magritte's reply to Torczyner in which he suggests that this work dates from 1955 is also an indication that in this matter Magritte was being economical with the truth.
Depicting a large granite rock resting on wooden floorboards overlooking the ocean, Le trou dans le mur belongs to a series of remarkable paintings in which Magritte disrupts the viewer's sense of space and material in a manner not dissimilar to the way in which Einstein's theory of relativity upsets the absolutes of Newtonian physics and Euclidean geometry.
Magritte's rock has the presence and substance normally allocated to the central human subjects in painting's as Manet's Le Balcon or Matisse's Woman with a Parasol, both of which seem to have inspired Magritte's composition.
Le trou dans le mur relates closely to the famous Le chateau des Pyrnes, (The Israel Museum, Jerusalem), painted soon after in 1959. But whereas the latter's boulder is shown levitating in mid-air, the large rock in the present painting is silhouetted against an airy sky and a calm sea, resting on floorboards which in reality would be unable to support its immense weight. This lends the image an air of ambiguity and a sense of the implausible that messes with conventional notions of scale, weight and place.
Through the smallest of discrepencies in our conventional view of the world, the bizarre location of this enormous rock pierces a hole in the empirical view of the world as propounded by Newton in a way that is reinforced by the title of the work. As the Zen teacher, D.T. Suzuki has observed, it is only when one has passed through to an understanding of how the marvellous, improbable and extraordinary are present within the ordinary and the commonplace that a single hair of the tortoise begins to weigh seven pounds and an event of one thousand years ago becomes a living experience of this very moment.
In the present work Magritte's remarkable command of the visual poetry of the object conjures a similar sense of the simultaneity of all phemomena within a magical and infinite universe. Using the conceptual paradox and visual shock of this giant stone set against the sky and the ocean, he evokes a powerful sense of the sublimity and mystery of the universe. He demonstrates that many curious and strange realities can coexist and that these wonders can be perceived if one looks through 'the hole in the wall'.