拍品專文
The evolution of form and content in the work of the major Surrealist artists was often rapid and protean, with significant developments occurring throughout their careers. The work of Yves Tanguy is the great exception. He was the only self-taught artist among those who used illusion in their Surrealist paintings. His earliest paintings are primitivistic, but by 1927, he arrived at the vision and technique which would carry him through the next three decades.
The year 1927 marked an important turning point in Tanguy's life. It was the year of his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste in Paris (in which the present painting was included) and of his marriage to Jeanne Ducracq. Discussing Tanguy's works of 1927, and most specifically the present one, Roland Penrose noted:
I cannot attempt to describe in detail the path by which Tanguy
followed with great sensibility and insight in the creation of a
visual language which appears majestically in mature paintings
such as Mama, Papa Is Wounded!, 1927, and A Large Painting
Which is a Landscape, 1927. In both cases a great space opens up before us inhabited by forms which in spite of their dis- similiarity have each their organic life and in conscience each one has a personality and a purpose.... The titles given to these paintings are in many cases baffling. According to Surrealist practice they were invented after the picture was finished and in general it was not intended that they should explain its content. More often they form a poetic hiatus between picture and title. (op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1983, pp. 7-8)
The poetry of Tanguy's mature imagery differs from that of the other illusionist Surrealists, and even from that of the "abstract"
painters in the group; it is less specifically literary. Though
on occasion his forms are anthropomorphic -- those of Through Birds, Through Fire, but Not Through Glass recall de Chirico's muses and lovers out of antique literature -- they are never particu- larized with features or anatomical details. Nor can his forms ever be identified as recognizable objects, as can the shapes of Miró
and Masson, to say nothing of those of Magritte and Dalí. If Tanguy's style is realistic, his visual poetry is abstract.
(W. S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage, New York,
1968, p. 102)
The year 1927 marked an important turning point in Tanguy's life. It was the year of his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Surréaliste in Paris (in which the present painting was included) and of his marriage to Jeanne Ducracq. Discussing Tanguy's works of 1927, and most specifically the present one, Roland Penrose noted:
I cannot attempt to describe in detail the path by which Tanguy
followed with great sensibility and insight in the creation of a
visual language which appears majestically in mature paintings
such as Mama, Papa Is Wounded!, 1927, and A Large Painting
Which is a Landscape, 1927. In both cases a great space opens up before us inhabited by forms which in spite of their dis- similiarity have each their organic life and in conscience each one has a personality and a purpose.... The titles given to these paintings are in many cases baffling. According to Surrealist practice they were invented after the picture was finished and in general it was not intended that they should explain its content. More often they form a poetic hiatus between picture and title. (op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1983, pp. 7-8)
The poetry of Tanguy's mature imagery differs from that of the other illusionist Surrealists, and even from that of the "abstract"
painters in the group; it is less specifically literary. Though
on occasion his forms are anthropomorphic -- those of Through Birds, Through Fire, but Not Through Glass recall de Chirico's muses and lovers out of antique literature -- they are never particu- larized with features or anatomical details. Nor can his forms ever be identified as recognizable objects, as can the shapes of Miró
and Masson, to say nothing of those of Magritte and Dalí. If Tanguy's style is realistic, his visual poetry is abstract.
(W. S. Rubin, Dada, Surrealism and their Heritage, New York,
1968, p. 102)