La folie Almayer

La folie Almayer is the gouache version of an oil, also titled La folie Almayer (D. Sylvester, no. 759), which was painted in May 1951. The gouache was executed in 1957 – six years after the larger version in oil. Drawings of the same composition also appear on two postcards Magritte sent to Louis and Irene Scutenaire and Paul Colinet, both postmarked 11 May 1959. The title of La folie Almayer was devised either by Louis Scutenaire or Paul Nougé, after Magritte had asked his friends to supply ‘a title of genius’ for his newly devised composition of the ‘tower root’.

The present work, almost identical to the oil that precedes it, depicts a cracked, decaying feudal tower which is anchored into thin air by roots. The stone tower simultaneously grows out of and morphs into the roots of a tree. By juxtaposing the motifs of a crumbling tower and sturdy roots, Magritte cleverly toys with the notions of permanence and decay. Perhaps a reference to the miserable fate of the eponymous figure of Almayer from Joseph Conrad’s 1895 novel Almayer’s Folly, La folie Almayer is a representation of the fragility of human existence.