Lot Essay
Delvaux's fascination with Surrealism was sparked by the Minotaure exhibition held in Brussels in 1934. He was particularly taken with the works by Magritte, de Chirico and Dali. Delvaux was introduced to the Surrealist by Magritte and as a result participated in several of their exhibitions over the following years. During his career Delvaux became an outstanding painter of the female nude and of atmospheres of 'unreality'. Through these images Delvaux never failed to involve the viewer in his profound questioning of the nature of representational painting, and of the expression of human desire through art.
The present work, dated 1948, is amongst the finest of Delvaux's works on paper. It is rare because of its degree of completion and flawlessness. Indeed most of Delvaux's works on paper are less finished and often bear the traces of reworking and rethinking by the artist. Les noeuds violets is also a fine example of 'unreality' of Delvaux's oeuvre, partly resulting from the presentation of a female nude in a carefully rendered space together with two other fully dressed figures with abnormally large pink bows and which appear to be both the same woman as the nude, as is often the case with background figures in Delvaux's paintings. The viewer is drawn into the surrealist mood by the beautiful nude, which is confrontationally placed in the foreground. The immediate result is an unexpected sense of intimacy and dream. But what is the history of the figures or the connection between them? Delvaux once explained when discussing his work more generally: 'These nudes participate purely as presences, without any particular role. They form part of the pictorial structure, the aim of which is purely poetic. There is an essential difference, therefore, between my painting and conventional history painting. In the latter, figures have an active function in relation to the subject of the painting. For me, this is not the case: my figures are active only in the lyrical sense; they have no mission in the picture beyond that of the poetic....In fact, the poetry expressed in the picture can express itself in no other way: we come up against words, which belong to another level of expression - language. The poem, here, is not written. If it were, or if it could be, the picture would become superfluous.' (J. Meuris, Sept dialogues avec Paul delvaux accompagnés de sept lettres imaginaires, Paris, 1971, pp. 22 and 58).
Les noeuds violets is very closely related to La voix publique (see illustration) the oil which is housed in the Musées des Beaux Arts de Belgique, which Delvaux painted three months later and which has become the subject of a postal stamp in Belgium today. Interestingly, both these pictures bring to mind a fascinating comparison with Ingres. Indeed their subject and composition reminds one of Ingres' Odalisque with slave of 1842. Delvaux was never simply an academic painter but some critics saw him as a natural successor of Ingres in the 20th century. While he paints figures according to the rules of conventional representation, he nevertheless abandons the standard syntax of neoclassical painting and embraces a fantasy enriched by dream and the unreal, thereby renewing the history of painting. David Scott argues that while Ingres can be seen as pursuing the ideal, not as an aim anymore, but as an object of rêverie, 'Delvaux's contribution to the academic tradition was to bring to the fore the unconscious or irrational content of those objects of reverie that have always been present in history painting - nudes, statues, etc.- but which have not been fully recognized as such because of their status as conventions. The role that Delvaux chose for himself was, then, that of surrealizing academicism, that is, of problematizing or deconstructing it.' Les noeuds violets takes its place in a series of works of the 30s and 40s 'where the nude female is juxtaposed with Classical landscapes, in which certain little incongruous details - a scrap of lace in the form of a snake, enormous pink bows, oil lamps, skulls, mirrors, ribbons, jewels, immense hat-pins, and many other fetishistic objects - punctuate the scene, in effect, surrealizing it; that is to say, they establish a bizarre or irrational- an unrealistic - link between the objects. [Delvaux's] aim seems to be to remind us that his art is constructed according to arbitrary conventions, whose strangeness has been achieved only through a long passage of time, and that, nevertheless, this unrealistic quality manages to promote deep rêverie, a rêverie that is authentic in that it puts us in contact with the unconscious or the oneiric, or invites us to make a richer visual reading of the picture. In Delvaux's paintings, then, the unrealistic little detail obliges us to re-read the image along lines that are different from those suggested by history or literature.....
Delvaux was able to exploit the academicism's double potential - as a means of seduction but also as an object ripe for deconstruction - more effectively perhaps, than any other artist for our century. For, acutely aware of the charm of the visual image (Delvaux once remarked that he would like to live in the world of his own paintings), he was also aware of the arbitrariness of the conventions governing pictorial representation and artistic apreciation. Delvaux uses them as devices both to demystify and to seduce the viewers of his pictures' (op.cit. pp. 65, 69, 70 and 79).
The present work, dated 1948, is amongst the finest of Delvaux's works on paper. It is rare because of its degree of completion and flawlessness. Indeed most of Delvaux's works on paper are less finished and often bear the traces of reworking and rethinking by the artist. Les noeuds violets is also a fine example of 'unreality' of Delvaux's oeuvre, partly resulting from the presentation of a female nude in a carefully rendered space together with two other fully dressed figures with abnormally large pink bows and which appear to be both the same woman as the nude, as is often the case with background figures in Delvaux's paintings. The viewer is drawn into the surrealist mood by the beautiful nude, which is confrontationally placed in the foreground. The immediate result is an unexpected sense of intimacy and dream. But what is the history of the figures or the connection between them? Delvaux once explained when discussing his work more generally: 'These nudes participate purely as presences, without any particular role. They form part of the pictorial structure, the aim of which is purely poetic. There is an essential difference, therefore, between my painting and conventional history painting. In the latter, figures have an active function in relation to the subject of the painting. For me, this is not the case: my figures are active only in the lyrical sense; they have no mission in the picture beyond that of the poetic....In fact, the poetry expressed in the picture can express itself in no other way: we come up against words, which belong to another level of expression - language. The poem, here, is not written. If it were, or if it could be, the picture would become superfluous.' (J. Meuris, Sept dialogues avec Paul delvaux accompagnés de sept lettres imaginaires, Paris, 1971, pp. 22 and 58).
Les noeuds violets is very closely related to La voix publique (see illustration) the oil which is housed in the Musées des Beaux Arts de Belgique, which Delvaux painted three months later and which has become the subject of a postal stamp in Belgium today. Interestingly, both these pictures bring to mind a fascinating comparison with Ingres. Indeed their subject and composition reminds one of Ingres' Odalisque with slave of 1842. Delvaux was never simply an academic painter but some critics saw him as a natural successor of Ingres in the 20th century. While he paints figures according to the rules of conventional representation, he nevertheless abandons the standard syntax of neoclassical painting and embraces a fantasy enriched by dream and the unreal, thereby renewing the history of painting. David Scott argues that while Ingres can be seen as pursuing the ideal, not as an aim anymore, but as an object of rêverie, 'Delvaux's contribution to the academic tradition was to bring to the fore the unconscious or irrational content of those objects of reverie that have always been present in history painting - nudes, statues, etc.- but which have not been fully recognized as such because of their status as conventions. The role that Delvaux chose for himself was, then, that of surrealizing academicism, that is, of problematizing or deconstructing it.' Les noeuds violets takes its place in a series of works of the 30s and 40s 'where the nude female is juxtaposed with Classical landscapes, in which certain little incongruous details - a scrap of lace in the form of a snake, enormous pink bows, oil lamps, skulls, mirrors, ribbons, jewels, immense hat-pins, and many other fetishistic objects - punctuate the scene, in effect, surrealizing it; that is to say, they establish a bizarre or irrational- an unrealistic - link between the objects. [Delvaux's] aim seems to be to remind us that his art is constructed according to arbitrary conventions, whose strangeness has been achieved only through a long passage of time, and that, nevertheless, this unrealistic quality manages to promote deep rêverie, a rêverie that is authentic in that it puts us in contact with the unconscious or the oneiric, or invites us to make a richer visual reading of the picture. In Delvaux's paintings, then, the unrealistic little detail obliges us to re-read the image along lines that are different from those suggested by history or literature.....
Delvaux was able to exploit the academicism's double potential - as a means of seduction but also as an object ripe for deconstruction - more effectively perhaps, than any other artist for our century. For, acutely aware of the charm of the visual image (Delvaux once remarked that he would like to live in the world of his own paintings), he was also aware of the arbitrariness of the conventions governing pictorial representation and artistic apreciation. Delvaux uses them as devices both to demystify and to seduce the viewers of his pictures' (op.cit. pp. 65, 69, 70 and 79).