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Lot Essay
The motifs which Tanguy depicts in his compositions are indescribable, protozoan inhabitants of a vast interior landscape of the imagination. Rendered in meticulous detail, these objects seem real, yet we know them to be nonexistent. Bridging the gap between the abstract and the figurative, their convincingly modeled volumes cast dark shadows across the landscape, even while they appear translucent and incorporeal. Tanguy's forms generally fill the foreground of his compositions, where they may even obey, in a strictly local context, the laws of perspective. In true Surrealist fashion, the forms of these compositions seem at once familiar and utterly unfathomable.
Tanguy shared with the great 15th century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch a taste for strange and inexplicable symbol-laden imagery, alchemical references, crowds of jostling figures, as well a careful precision in their rendering. A slow and meticulous craftsman, Tanguy loved objects that were beautifully made, and he imparted to the elements in his paintings the same care and convincing presence that a realist painter gives to a still life or landscape. These "inscapes" of the mind seem balanced on the brink between order and chaos. "The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor--surprise to the artist himself as well as to others, " Tanguy stated. "I work very irregularly and by crises. Should I seek the reasons for my painting, I would feel that it would be a self-imprisonment" (quoted in "The creative process," Art Digest, New York, 15 January 1954, vol. 28, no. 8, p. 14).
Executed in 1946, the present work is is a powerful example of the significant change that had taken place in the artist's work since moving to the United States in November 1939. Although Tanguy altered neither his painterly style nor his working method upon his arrival, continuing to painstakingly build the forms of his mysterious landscapes intuitively piece by piece, in the United States his visions grew in both scope, stature and complexity. Most dramatic, however, as Tanguy himself observed, was the change in his palette. In an interview he gave to James Johnson Sweeney of New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1946, Tanguy remarked on this recent change in his work, commenting: "Here in the United States the only change I can distinguish in my work is possibly in my palette. What the cause of this intensification of colour is I can't say. But I do recognise a considerable change. Perhaps it is due to the light. I also have a feeling of greater space here--more 'room'. But that was why I came" (quoted in Eleven European Artists, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, vol. 13, nos. 4-5 [interview with J.J. Sweeney 1946], p. 22f).
Tanguy shared with the great 15th century Flemish painter Hieronymus Bosch a taste for strange and inexplicable symbol-laden imagery, alchemical references, crowds of jostling figures, as well a careful precision in their rendering. A slow and meticulous craftsman, Tanguy loved objects that were beautifully made, and he imparted to the elements in his paintings the same care and convincing presence that a realist painter gives to a still life or landscape. These "inscapes" of the mind seem balanced on the brink between order and chaos. "The element of surprise in the creation of a work of art is, to me, the most important factor--surprise to the artist himself as well as to others, " Tanguy stated. "I work very irregularly and by crises. Should I seek the reasons for my painting, I would feel that it would be a self-imprisonment" (quoted in "The creative process," Art Digest, New York, 15 January 1954, vol. 28, no. 8, p. 14).
Executed in 1946, the present work is is a powerful example of the significant change that had taken place in the artist's work since moving to the United States in November 1939. Although Tanguy altered neither his painterly style nor his working method upon his arrival, continuing to painstakingly build the forms of his mysterious landscapes intuitively piece by piece, in the United States his visions grew in both scope, stature and complexity. Most dramatic, however, as Tanguy himself observed, was the change in his palette. In an interview he gave to James Johnson Sweeney of New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1946, Tanguy remarked on this recent change in his work, commenting: "Here in the United States the only change I can distinguish in my work is possibly in my palette. What the cause of this intensification of colour is I can't say. But I do recognise a considerable change. Perhaps it is due to the light. I also have a feeling of greater space here--more 'room'. But that was why I came" (quoted in Eleven European Artists, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, vol. 13, nos. 4-5 [interview with J.J. Sweeney 1946], p. 22f).