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拍品專文
This work has been requested for the exhibition Les jeux dans l'art du XXème siècle being held at the Espace Bellevue, Biarritz from June to September 2002.
Delvaux's two visits to Italy in 1938 and 1939 proved a revelation for the artist who had always been predisposed towards the classical in his art. In the aftermath of these visits classical architecture began to appear increasingly in his work. In addition, the Second World War and the Nazi Occupation of Belgium forced Delvaux to retreat into himself and for reasons that are still not fully understood, animated figures of skeletons - like those of his Belgian predecessor James Ensor - began to populate his work. Le squelette à la coquille (The Skeleton and the Shell) is a strongly graphic work that combines both these important elements of Delvaux's art into a single powerful and enduring image.
One of the things that had most impressed Delvaux when he had travelled to Italy was the way in which the classical artist had attempted to express the day-to day life of his world. "It is almost impossible for us to imagine the man of Roman times living the daily life of a man," he observed, and yet this very quality of his life and his world is precisely what the classical artist attempted to convey. Le squelette à la coquille expresses these same sentiments in a powerful and original way. For Delvaux, the skeleton was far removed from being a figure associated with death. "I was attracted because primarily it is a structure" he remarked, "Then it is life. It is life in essence after all. A skeleton is the frame of the living creature. A frame is important and the extraordinary thing is that this frame already preserves within it the general outline of the living creature, the form of the bones, the hip, the tibia, the fibula, you can feel the shape of the arms (for example) when you see a skeleton's arms" (Paul Delvaux speaking in Paul Delvaux; the Sleepwalker of Saint Idesbald, a film by Adrian Maben, 1990).
The most important aspect of the skeleton for Delvaux was to be able to use it as a vehicle of expression. "For me the skeleton is a very, very, very strong expression of the human being for under the skin there are bones. The skeleton is the image of the human being. It is alive, and I wished to create expressive scenes with skeletons" (cited in exh. cat. Paul Delvaux 1897-1994, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 1997, p. 26).
In Le squelette à la coquille Delvaux juxtaposes the figures of two skeletons against the enduring ruins of a classical city. One reclines - Venus-like - on a chaise-longue in a pose that is echoed in the distance by a statue. In this way Delvaux plays with our sense of the animate and the inanimate and with time, for this skeleton is seemingly alive, and the statue not, but the statue is a figure of someone who once was alive and the skeleton is, usually, the inanimate inner structure of a life that has expired. These issues seem also to be echoed by the central figure of the skeleton reaching for a shell that strangely is lying on the tiled floor of this pantheon-like arcade. Cutting a figure that seems to anticipate the reaching towards the monolith in Kubrick's 2001 - a Space Odyssey, the skeleton - frozen in the act of stooping to pick up the shell - appears to be on the brink of a major discovery. Perhaps the discovery will be the realisation of the fact that the shell too, like the skeleton, is a life-supporting structure but an outer structure - a casing that is in effect the inverse of the skeleton. Its shape mirrors - like the statues of the ancient ruined city - the outward appearance of the life that it once contained.
In this way, by depicting a series of shells, - the skeleton, the statue, the city and the shell itself - Delvaux poses timeless but important questions about how the structures of life, from the human body and the work of art to the architecture and planning of our cities, reflect and echo the life that they contain.
Delvaux's two visits to Italy in 1938 and 1939 proved a revelation for the artist who had always been predisposed towards the classical in his art. In the aftermath of these visits classical architecture began to appear increasingly in his work. In addition, the Second World War and the Nazi Occupation of Belgium forced Delvaux to retreat into himself and for reasons that are still not fully understood, animated figures of skeletons - like those of his Belgian predecessor James Ensor - began to populate his work. Le squelette à la coquille (The Skeleton and the Shell) is a strongly graphic work that combines both these important elements of Delvaux's art into a single powerful and enduring image.
One of the things that had most impressed Delvaux when he had travelled to Italy was the way in which the classical artist had attempted to express the day-to day life of his world. "It is almost impossible for us to imagine the man of Roman times living the daily life of a man," he observed, and yet this very quality of his life and his world is precisely what the classical artist attempted to convey. Le squelette à la coquille expresses these same sentiments in a powerful and original way. For Delvaux, the skeleton was far removed from being a figure associated with death. "I was attracted because primarily it is a structure" he remarked, "Then it is life. It is life in essence after all. A skeleton is the frame of the living creature. A frame is important and the extraordinary thing is that this frame already preserves within it the general outline of the living creature, the form of the bones, the hip, the tibia, the fibula, you can feel the shape of the arms (for example) when you see a skeleton's arms" (Paul Delvaux speaking in Paul Delvaux; the Sleepwalker of Saint Idesbald, a film by Adrian Maben, 1990).
The most important aspect of the skeleton for Delvaux was to be able to use it as a vehicle of expression. "For me the skeleton is a very, very, very strong expression of the human being for under the skin there are bones. The skeleton is the image of the human being. It is alive, and I wished to create expressive scenes with skeletons" (cited in exh. cat. Paul Delvaux 1897-1994, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, 1997, p. 26).
In Le squelette à la coquille Delvaux juxtaposes the figures of two skeletons against the enduring ruins of a classical city. One reclines - Venus-like - on a chaise-longue in a pose that is echoed in the distance by a statue. In this way Delvaux plays with our sense of the animate and the inanimate and with time, for this skeleton is seemingly alive, and the statue not, but the statue is a figure of someone who once was alive and the skeleton is, usually, the inanimate inner structure of a life that has expired. These issues seem also to be echoed by the central figure of the skeleton reaching for a shell that strangely is lying on the tiled floor of this pantheon-like arcade. Cutting a figure that seems to anticipate the reaching towards the monolith in Kubrick's 2001 - a Space Odyssey, the skeleton - frozen in the act of stooping to pick up the shell - appears to be on the brink of a major discovery. Perhaps the discovery will be the realisation of the fact that the shell too, like the skeleton, is a life-supporting structure but an outer structure - a casing that is in effect the inverse of the skeleton. Its shape mirrors - like the statues of the ancient ruined city - the outward appearance of the life that it once contained.
In this way, by depicting a series of shells, - the skeleton, the statue, the city and the shell itself - Delvaux poses timeless but important questions about how the structures of life, from the human body and the work of art to the architecture and planning of our cities, reflect and echo the life that they contain.