Lot Essay
Typical of Magritte's aesthetic approach to pictoral representation, Les barricades mysterieuses fuses a nocturnal landscape with a sun drenched cloud filled sky. Skeletons of trees become the veins of gigantic leaves set on the grounds of an estate where a mysterious woman rides a prancing horse. This fantastic juxtaposition of elements that do not ordinarily belong together create Magritte's unique style of magic realism. He discusses his ideas in a letter to André 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. (Letter from René Magritte to André Bosmans July 1959 in H. Torcyner, Magritte Ideal and Images, New York, 1977, p. 109)
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. (Letter from René Magritte to André Bosmans July 1959 in H. Torcyner, Magritte Ideal and Images, New York, 1977, p. 109)