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Lot Essay
In 1948, while musing on the purpose of the titles he assigned to his paintings, René Magritte proclaimed: “I think the best title for a picture is a poetic one. In other words, a title consistent with the more or less lively emotion we feel when we look at the picture” (“On Titles,” 1948; in K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings, Richmond, 2018, p. 115). Across a series of handwritten manuscripts—now preserved in the Archives of Contemporary Art in Belgium and collectively known as “On Titles”—the artist offered a collection of short statements on some of his recent work. Among these brief notes, Magritte wrote about Les droits de l’homme: “Here, man is reminded of his right to act on objects and change the world” (ibid., p. 114). Invoking the French translation of Thomas Paine’s seminal treatise, The Rights of Man, as well as H.G. Wells’s radical 1940 manifesto on universal human rights in the face of war, the painting presents an enigmatic, uncanny scene, in which an inanimate object is brought to life, in order to deliver a speech. Completed on 16 January 1948 and included in a series of solo exhibitions that year, Les droits de l’homme is a testament to Magritte’s unique approach to Surrealism in the aftermath of the Second World War, as he sought to depict “the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery” (quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 203).
At the heart of the composition stands a variation on one of Magritte’s iconic leitmotifs, the mysterious bilboquet. This object had first made its appearance in the artist’s Surrealist paintings of the mid-1920s, taking inspiration from a popular handheld game of the same name, known in many cultures throughout the world. The bilboquet typically consists of a ball with a hole bored into it, which fits on a spike at the top of a wooden stick shaped to fit the hand, and is attached to the handle by a string. In a test of dexterity, the player must fling the ball upward, and then try to catch it on the spike as often as possible within a designated period of time. In Magritte’s interpretations of this object, the wooden baton takes on numerous different roles within his surreal compositions: in Portrait de Georgette Magritte (Sylvester, no. 76; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), for example, the bilboquet remains true-to-scale, its familiar shape offering a stabilizing support to the empty wooden picture-frame that leans against it. However, in Le jockey perdu (Sylvester, no. 81; Private collection) rows and rows of bilboquets appear as towering tree-trunks, creating a strange man-made forest, while in works such as La naissance de l’idole (Sylvester, no. 89; Private collection) and Le Rencontre (Sylvester, no. 99; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf), Magritte anthropomorphizes the wooden object, adding an eye, a hand or an arm to the bilboquet, transforming it into an unsettling quasi-human presence, at once animate and inanimate. The artist would refer to the bilboquets simply as his “wooden figures,” and they are in many ways reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s strange, inanimate mannequins—trovatori, muse, and more—that populated his Metaphysical works.
By the 1940s, the bilboquet had evolved into a distinctly figurative presence—in 1945 Magritte further enhanced the effect, playing with its silhouette to create more pronounced curves, adding naturalistically rendered arms and hands that often gesture animatedly, and, perhaps most notably, elongating the spherical shape of the ball atop the handle into a bulbously spouted form that comes to represent a proudly elevated head. The squat shape of the bilboquet’s newly formed mouth and snout also recalls a nineteenth-century mortar, an artillery piece used for hurling explosive shells in steep trajectories over the walls of fortifications. The content of wartime newsreels may have suggested this allusion to Magritte—in some pictures where the artist has employed this form, the mouth of the bilboquet actually bursts forth in flames, like a cannon being fired (Sylvester, no. 626; Private collection). Described by Harry Torczyner as an “anthropoid bilboquet,” these new characters seem eager to show off their gift of speech, and they usually appear, as seen here, draped in a richly-hued red cloak, and adopting a formal and declamatory stance, bringing to mind a noble orator or statesman (ibid., p. 152).
In Les droits de l’homme, one such speaker stands alone on a well-lit thoroughfare, seemingly life-size and imposing, a gentle seascape and overcast sky serving as a serene backdrop. The uncanny quality of the scene is heightened by the strange pairing of objects that flank this central character—to the left and partially tucked away behind the bilboquet’s cloak is a roughly hewn boulder, while to the right, a tuba is dramatically engulfed in flames on the pavement. As the bilboquet delivers its speech, it holds a glass of water in one hand, while the other raises a small leaf by way of a prop, perhaps a visual aide to something this mysterious character is attempting to explain to an unseen audience. When combined with the title, this subtle gesture creates the impression that the bilboquet is delivering a profound message to his audience, perhaps a political statement or a call to action, a meditation on nature maybe, or an attempt to dissect the meaning of reality and man’s place within it. However, the subject of the bilboquet’s speech and its intentions ultimately remain a mystery to us, its impassioned proclamations left an unknowable enigma for the viewer to ponder.
In this way, Les droits de l’homme, as with so much of Magritte’s work, defies any clear, logical explanation. Throughout his life, the artist repeatedly refuted the myriad of psychological and biographical interpretations that sought to decode the meaning of his work, maintaining time and again that it was the image alone that mattered. “I have nothing to express!” he once exclaimed, “I simply search for images, and invent and invent… only the image counts, the inexplicable and mysterious image, since all is mystery in our life” (quoted in M. Blots, “Silhouette: René Magritte” in La Métropole, 2 July 1951; in K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., op. cit., 2018, p. 138). Indeed, when Les droits de l’homme was included in a touring exhibition of America in 1960-1961, Magritte lamented the strange, seemingly arbitrary interpretations that had been attached to the painting by various critics: “A recent experience has made me realize the gap between one intelligence and another,” he wrote in a letter to André Bosmans. “I have just heard an ‘explanation’ of one of my pictures, Les droits de l’homme. It appears that the fire in my picture is Prometheus’s fire, but also a symbol of war! The figure holding the leaf is a representation of peace—the leaf is an olive leaf!! … But I won’t go on, because the imagination of painting enthusiasts is inexhaustible, but very banal, these enthusiasts being entirely devoid of inspiration...” (letter to A. Bosmans, 20 September 1961; quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., op. cit., 1993, p. 396).
Letters from the late 1940s between Magritte and his principle dealer in America, Alexander Iolas, reveal that, having failed to find a buyer when initially shown at exhibition in 1948, the artist was eager for Les droits de l’homme to be offered directly to The Museum of Modern Art in New York for a discounted sum. However, despite Iolas’s efforts and numerous overtures on the artist’s behalf—which included a generous offer for the painting to be gifted to the museum’s collections by John and Dominique de Menil—Les droits de l’homme remained with the dealer, and was instead sold to Iolas’s accountant, Irving Abbey. When it last appeared at auction at Christie’s in March 1984, the painting achieved a new record price for a painting by Magritte.
At the heart of the composition stands a variation on one of Magritte’s iconic leitmotifs, the mysterious bilboquet. This object had first made its appearance in the artist’s Surrealist paintings of the mid-1920s, taking inspiration from a popular handheld game of the same name, known in many cultures throughout the world. The bilboquet typically consists of a ball with a hole bored into it, which fits on a spike at the top of a wooden stick shaped to fit the hand, and is attached to the handle by a string. In a test of dexterity, the player must fling the ball upward, and then try to catch it on the spike as often as possible within a designated period of time. In Magritte’s interpretations of this object, the wooden baton takes on numerous different roles within his surreal compositions: in Portrait de Georgette Magritte (Sylvester, no. 76; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris), for example, the bilboquet remains true-to-scale, its familiar shape offering a stabilizing support to the empty wooden picture-frame that leans against it. However, in Le jockey perdu (Sylvester, no. 81; Private collection) rows and rows of bilboquets appear as towering tree-trunks, creating a strange man-made forest, while in works such as La naissance de l’idole (Sylvester, no. 89; Private collection) and Le Rencontre (Sylvester, no. 99; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf), Magritte anthropomorphizes the wooden object, adding an eye, a hand or an arm to the bilboquet, transforming it into an unsettling quasi-human presence, at once animate and inanimate. The artist would refer to the bilboquets simply as his “wooden figures,” and they are in many ways reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s strange, inanimate mannequins—trovatori, muse, and more—that populated his Metaphysical works.
By the 1940s, the bilboquet had evolved into a distinctly figurative presence—in 1945 Magritte further enhanced the effect, playing with its silhouette to create more pronounced curves, adding naturalistically rendered arms and hands that often gesture animatedly, and, perhaps most notably, elongating the spherical shape of the ball atop the handle into a bulbously spouted form that comes to represent a proudly elevated head. The squat shape of the bilboquet’s newly formed mouth and snout also recalls a nineteenth-century mortar, an artillery piece used for hurling explosive shells in steep trajectories over the walls of fortifications. The content of wartime newsreels may have suggested this allusion to Magritte—in some pictures where the artist has employed this form, the mouth of the bilboquet actually bursts forth in flames, like a cannon being fired (Sylvester, no. 626; Private collection). Described by Harry Torczyner as an “anthropoid bilboquet,” these new characters seem eager to show off their gift of speech, and they usually appear, as seen here, draped in a richly-hued red cloak, and adopting a formal and declamatory stance, bringing to mind a noble orator or statesman (ibid., p. 152).
In Les droits de l’homme, one such speaker stands alone on a well-lit thoroughfare, seemingly life-size and imposing, a gentle seascape and overcast sky serving as a serene backdrop. The uncanny quality of the scene is heightened by the strange pairing of objects that flank this central character—to the left and partially tucked away behind the bilboquet’s cloak is a roughly hewn boulder, while to the right, a tuba is dramatically engulfed in flames on the pavement. As the bilboquet delivers its speech, it holds a glass of water in one hand, while the other raises a small leaf by way of a prop, perhaps a visual aide to something this mysterious character is attempting to explain to an unseen audience. When combined with the title, this subtle gesture creates the impression that the bilboquet is delivering a profound message to his audience, perhaps a political statement or a call to action, a meditation on nature maybe, or an attempt to dissect the meaning of reality and man’s place within it. However, the subject of the bilboquet’s speech and its intentions ultimately remain a mystery to us, its impassioned proclamations left an unknowable enigma for the viewer to ponder.
In this way, Les droits de l’homme, as with so much of Magritte’s work, defies any clear, logical explanation. Throughout his life, the artist repeatedly refuted the myriad of psychological and biographical interpretations that sought to decode the meaning of his work, maintaining time and again that it was the image alone that mattered. “I have nothing to express!” he once exclaimed, “I simply search for images, and invent and invent… only the image counts, the inexplicable and mysterious image, since all is mystery in our life” (quoted in M. Blots, “Silhouette: René Magritte” in La Métropole, 2 July 1951; in K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., op. cit., 2018, p. 138). Indeed, when Les droits de l’homme was included in a touring exhibition of America in 1960-1961, Magritte lamented the strange, seemingly arbitrary interpretations that had been attached to the painting by various critics: “A recent experience has made me realize the gap between one intelligence and another,” he wrote in a letter to André Bosmans. “I have just heard an ‘explanation’ of one of my pictures, Les droits de l’homme. It appears that the fire in my picture is Prometheus’s fire, but also a symbol of war! The figure holding the leaf is a representation of peace—the leaf is an olive leaf!! … But I won’t go on, because the imagination of painting enthusiasts is inexhaustible, but very banal, these enthusiasts being entirely devoid of inspiration...” (letter to A. Bosmans, 20 September 1961; quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., op. cit., 1993, p. 396).
Letters from the late 1940s between Magritte and his principle dealer in America, Alexander Iolas, reveal that, having failed to find a buyer when initially shown at exhibition in 1948, the artist was eager for Les droits de l’homme to be offered directly to The Museum of Modern Art in New York for a discounted sum. However, despite Iolas’s efforts and numerous overtures on the artist’s behalf—which included a generous offer for the painting to be gifted to the museum’s collections by John and Dominique de Menil—Les droits de l’homme remained with the dealer, and was instead sold to Iolas’s accountant, Irving Abbey. When it last appeared at auction at Christie’s in March 1984, the painting achieved a new record price for a painting by Magritte.