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Lot Essay
Executed in 1946, La grande marée provides a window into the mysterious pictorial world of René Magritte, the colourful and richly finished, large-scale gouache presenting an enigmatic scene that pivots on an elegantly restrained assortment of objects. A female torso stands in front of a rippling curtain, its smooth contours simultaneously suggesting human flesh and inanimate wood, while a box of cigars sits alongside, apparently abandoned, with one resting on the edge of the container, lit and gently emitting smoke. Filled with flickering, rippling brushwork that dances across the page, this gouache was offered to the collector Pierre Andrieu in Toulouse in December 1947, along with seven other recently completed works. Describing the images in a letter to Andrieu dated 20 December 1947, Magritte enclosed a small summary sketch of the painting, listing its contents: ‘cigare allumé sortant d’une caisse de cigares torse de femme moitié chair et moitié bois’ / ‘lit cigar protruding from a cigar box female torso half flesh half wood’ (quoted in D. Sylvester, René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné, Gouaches, Temperas, Watercolours and Papiers Collés 1918-1967, London, 1994, vol. IV, p. 324).
A letter to the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard from the start of the 1940s details the instincts that were shaping Magritte’s painterly style and palette at this time. ‘Doubtless I have to find the means of realising what has plagued me: pictures in which I could explore the “beautiful side” of life. By this I understand the whole traditional repertoire of delightful things: women, flowers, birds, trees, the atmosphere of happiness, etc. I have managed to bring a fresh wind to my painting. In my pictures an enormous magic has now replaced the uncanny poetry whose effect I used so much to strive for. On the whole, pleasure now supplants a whole series of essential interests that I wish increasingly to leave out of account... the power of these pictures is to make one acutely aware of the imperfections of everyday life’ (quoted in S. Gohr, Magritte: Attempting the Impossible, New York, 2009, p. 191). Embodying these aesthetic principles, La grande marée is an intriguing example of the artist’s approach to his art at this time, at once strangely suggestive, yet filled with a uniquely Magrittean sense of charm.
The picture had appeared in Magritte’s solo exhibition at the Galerie Dietrich in December 1946, where it was titled in the catalogue Le grand monde (High Society). Magritte renamed the gouache after the catalogue had gone to press, or perhaps while the exhibition was still in progress, referring to it as La grande marée (The Spring Tide) in a letter dated 2 January 1947. The artist also described the gouache and its revised title in his 1946 essay Titres, in which he revealed his shifting thoughts on the power and effectiveness of such naming devices: ‘The image was originally called “High Society,” but the title has been changed because there was a possibility of it being interpreted as a satire on high society through the presence of a box of cigars. It is not a question of satire but of a poetic effect. “Spring tide” is the flooding into our field of vision of unknown objects such as a female torso, half flesh, half wood, and the cigar emerging lit from its box’ (ibid.).
Either title is teasingly evocative; it is nevertheless curious that Magritte felt the need to change it. The initial title Le grand monde does indeed suggest a none-too-subtle interpretation of the imagery. This scenario is surrealistically Freudian; the lit and smoking cigar may be interpreted as aroused, libidinous male sexuality, but still confined within its wooden box. The soft sunlit flesh that comprises one side of the female torso is the object of this male desire, which has been thwarted by the hard wooden half that she has presented to such advances. While Magritte’s earlier use of a faux-bois technique in his depictions of the female body suggested the sensuous, soft texture of animal fur, here the effect renders the flesh impenetrable yet vulnerable, the smoking cigar threatening to set it alight.
At the same time, the refreshed title La grande marée clearly alludes to an incoming, cresting oceanic wave behind the bust, which – in a typically Magrittian reversal – places the flood-tide of the sea above the billowing clouds of the sky. As the artist related in his Titres, the onrush of these ambiguously related, even contradictory objects, is the ‘poetic effect’ he aimed to express in his works. Subjecting familiar objects to such unexpected, strange transformations was an essential tool in his quest to jolt viewers from their passive acceptance of reality. ‘The creation of new objects; the transformation of known objects; the alteration of certain objects’ substance,’ he explained in a 1938 lecture, ‘all these, in sum, were ways of forcing objects finally to become sensational’ (quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. R. Miller, New York, 1977, p. 216).
In the 1920s he explored this idea through the gradual metamorphosis of objects into wood, focusing on the transformation of the sky, or the soft flesh of a woman’s torso into the distinctive pattern, colouring and texture of smooth wooden planks. In La grande marée, Magritte takes these experiments further, focusing the viewer’s attention on the division between the wooden pattern on one half of the torso and the subtly nuanced tones of flesh on the opposing side. In this way, Magritte forces the viewer to question their understanding of the ambiguous materiality of the object, playing with notions of reality and artifice – is the object made from painted plaster, a wooden mannequin, or a real, supple, yet fragmented body? Similarly, as the torso is shown in the process of transformation, it remains unclear what the original state may have been, and which elements reflect the new, unexpected substance it reaches through by this peculiar, mysterious metamorphosis.
A letter to the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard from the start of the 1940s details the instincts that were shaping Magritte’s painterly style and palette at this time. ‘Doubtless I have to find the means of realising what has plagued me: pictures in which I could explore the “beautiful side” of life. By this I understand the whole traditional repertoire of delightful things: women, flowers, birds, trees, the atmosphere of happiness, etc. I have managed to bring a fresh wind to my painting. In my pictures an enormous magic has now replaced the uncanny poetry whose effect I used so much to strive for. On the whole, pleasure now supplants a whole series of essential interests that I wish increasingly to leave out of account... the power of these pictures is to make one acutely aware of the imperfections of everyday life’ (quoted in S. Gohr, Magritte: Attempting the Impossible, New York, 2009, p. 191). Embodying these aesthetic principles, La grande marée is an intriguing example of the artist’s approach to his art at this time, at once strangely suggestive, yet filled with a uniquely Magrittean sense of charm.
The picture had appeared in Magritte’s solo exhibition at the Galerie Dietrich in December 1946, where it was titled in the catalogue Le grand monde (High Society). Magritte renamed the gouache after the catalogue had gone to press, or perhaps while the exhibition was still in progress, referring to it as La grande marée (The Spring Tide) in a letter dated 2 January 1947. The artist also described the gouache and its revised title in his 1946 essay Titres, in which he revealed his shifting thoughts on the power and effectiveness of such naming devices: ‘The image was originally called “High Society,” but the title has been changed because there was a possibility of it being interpreted as a satire on high society through the presence of a box of cigars. It is not a question of satire but of a poetic effect. “Spring tide” is the flooding into our field of vision of unknown objects such as a female torso, half flesh, half wood, and the cigar emerging lit from its box’ (ibid.).
Either title is teasingly evocative; it is nevertheless curious that Magritte felt the need to change it. The initial title Le grand monde does indeed suggest a none-too-subtle interpretation of the imagery. This scenario is surrealistically Freudian; the lit and smoking cigar may be interpreted as aroused, libidinous male sexuality, but still confined within its wooden box. The soft sunlit flesh that comprises one side of the female torso is the object of this male desire, which has been thwarted by the hard wooden half that she has presented to such advances. While Magritte’s earlier use of a faux-bois technique in his depictions of the female body suggested the sensuous, soft texture of animal fur, here the effect renders the flesh impenetrable yet vulnerable, the smoking cigar threatening to set it alight.
At the same time, the refreshed title La grande marée clearly alludes to an incoming, cresting oceanic wave behind the bust, which – in a typically Magrittian reversal – places the flood-tide of the sea above the billowing clouds of the sky. As the artist related in his Titres, the onrush of these ambiguously related, even contradictory objects, is the ‘poetic effect’ he aimed to express in his works. Subjecting familiar objects to such unexpected, strange transformations was an essential tool in his quest to jolt viewers from their passive acceptance of reality. ‘The creation of new objects; the transformation of known objects; the alteration of certain objects’ substance,’ he explained in a 1938 lecture, ‘all these, in sum, were ways of forcing objects finally to become sensational’ (quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. R. Miller, New York, 1977, p. 216).
In the 1920s he explored this idea through the gradual metamorphosis of objects into wood, focusing on the transformation of the sky, or the soft flesh of a woman’s torso into the distinctive pattern, colouring and texture of smooth wooden planks. In La grande marée, Magritte takes these experiments further, focusing the viewer’s attention on the division between the wooden pattern on one half of the torso and the subtly nuanced tones of flesh on the opposing side. In this way, Magritte forces the viewer to question their understanding of the ambiguous materiality of the object, playing with notions of reality and artifice – is the object made from painted plaster, a wooden mannequin, or a real, supple, yet fragmented body? Similarly, as the torso is shown in the process of transformation, it remains unclear what the original state may have been, and which elements reflect the new, unexpected substance it reaches through by this peculiar, mysterious metamorphosis.