Les vases communicants

细节

René Magritte (1898-1967)
Les vases communicants
signed 'magritte' (lower right); signed, dated and inscribed 'Les Vases Communiquants 1946 Magritte René MAGRITTE' (on the reverse)
gouache on paper
14 1/8 x 19½ in. (35.8 x 49.6 cm.)
Executed in 1946

来源

Alex Salkin.
Iolas Gallery, New York.
Sidney Janis, New York, by whom possibly acquired from the above.
Private collection, New York; sale, Sotheby's, New York, 27 May 1976, lot 266 (illustrated in colour).
Nicholas Tooth, by whom acquired at the above sale.
Christian Fayt, Knokke-Heist, by whom acquired from the above.
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels, by whom acquired from the above.
Christian Fayt, Knokke-Heist, by whom acquired back from the above.
Sala Dalmau, Barcelona, by 1979.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

出版

Letter from Magritte to Alex Salkin, 2 January 1947.
P. Tyler (intro.), exh. cat., René Magritte, New York, 1947.
Letter from Magritte to Alexandre Iolas, 21 April 1947.
Letter from Alex Salkin to Alexandre Iolas, 3 May 1948.
Letter from Alex Salkin to Alexandre Iolas, 13 January 1949.
D. Sylvester (ed.), René Magritte, Catalogue raisonné, vol. IV, Gouaches, Temperas, Watercolours and Papiers Collés, 1918-1967, Antwerp, 1994, no. 1197 (illustrated p. 64).

展览

New York, Hugo Gallery, René Magritte, April 1947, no. 29.
Beverly Hills, Copley Galleries, Magritte, September 1948, no. 21. Paris, Grand Palais, Galerie Isy Brachot, Magritte, October 1977, no. 10.
Knokke-Heist, Christian Fayt Art Gallery, June - July 1978, no. 34.

注意事项

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

拍品专文

Executed in 1946, Les vases communicants presents the viewer with four burning elements: the taper-like candle and the matches which are associated with fire, the key and bilboquet which are not. In a parody of the workings of the human mind, Magritte has presented these elements in a wooden cabinet, each categorized and arranged as though by some Surrealist collector according to hidden criteria that are beyond our grasp. An impossible and alien logic lies behind this wunderkammer of the impossible.

Taking its title from an essay on dreams written by André Breton, Les vases communicants explicitly appears to investigate the processes of thought and understanding inherent in our waking, and sleeping, comprehension of the world. 'A title,' stated Magritte, ''justifies' the image by completing it. Nietzsche also said 'there is no thought without language'. Could the painting that affects us be a language without thought?' (Magritte, 1943, quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. Richard Miller, New York, 1977, p. 203). The disjointed, seemingly associated elements in Les vases communicants certainly bear all the hallmarks of being language without thought, echoing other works in which Magritte placed words and objects in strange compartments while pointing to the hollow limitations of words, and their inability to truly convey meaning or a true idea of the objects they describe. This was a subject that was of great interest to Magritte, and which he frequently tackled both in his painting and in his writing, not least in his famous illustrated essay Les mots et les choses. In Les vases communicants, Magritte takes elements both familiar and uncanny, places them in a deliberately banal context, and thereby stingingly attacks human communication, categorization, and the arbitrary composition of our thoughts.