.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
In L'Été, Paul Delvaux plunges the viewer into a leafy glade, populated by five women, four of whom are clothed partially in timeless, colourful drapery. The ground is dry and strewn with rocks, yet the trees provide a dense green canopy that dominates the upper half of the canvas, a couple of the trees punctuated with blossom and fruit. A formal hedge and a lamppost indicate that this is a cultivated scene, rather than woodlands. The women appear rapt in their own distinctive actions, most of them standing as though engaging in some unknowable ritual. In the foreground, two of the figures hold each other, while in the background a woman in a dress is shown from behind, looking away, either towards or over the hedge.
By the time Delvaux painted L'Été, his dreamlike visions had become icons in their own rights. He was a celebrated international artist, his fame based on these visions. Indeed, it is telling that L'Été was in fact a commission, and featured in a number of lifetime exhibitions and publications. It had been in the 1930s that the subject of women, often wearing little partly in order to remove any sense of a specific historical moment, entered his works. Despite their nudity, they often appear almost vestal, proceeding through the arena of the composition as though directed by their own mystical and mysterious purposes. The figure on the left in particular is shown in the attitude of someone making an offering in an ancient frieze. Over the years, Delvaux created numerous variations upon this theme, tapping into it for its oneiric sense of mystery and possibility. Indeed, he painted another composition entitled L'Été a quarter of a century earlier, in 1938 (now in the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland).
Two key biographical moments in Delvaux’s life introduced the women who became the subjects of his pictures. The first was the death of his mother; the second, his visit to the Spitzner anatomical museum. There, amongst the various models, waxworks and pictures showing illnesses and treatments, was the ‘Sleeping Venus,’ an automaton that appeared to breathe despite the womb being opened by four disembodied male hands. Straddling the borders of the real and the represented, of the inert and the alive, this became a springboard for his own explorations of a world, a universe, that was at once tethered to our own and yet somehow utterly impossible and detached. The line between death and life was one that Delvaux probed in many works, beginning in the 1930s. The female flesh that he showed appeared cold yet supple. When he began to incorporate skeletons in some of his compositions, they were often imbued with a vitality that his female figures deliberately eschewed. Instead, they were granted an esoteric elegance as they seemed to sleepwalk through his imagined universe.
For Delvaux, the sense of women as the roots of creation was key to their presence in his works. This related to the concept of motherhood. After all, life begins with birth, the ultimate act of human creation. For Delvaux, women were the wellsprings of humanity. It was this aspect of femininity that resulted in the women often being depicted either naked or with drifts of material hanging like drapery, as in most of the figures in L'Été. Delvaux explained this decision: ‘They come from the very roots of the history of art. They just arrive,’ he said. ‘They’re naked because I can’t dress them as if they belonged to some particular era of history. They’re timeless’ (quoted in M-F. Saurat, ‘Interview,’ in R. Thérond, ed., Encounters with Great Painters, trans. M. Stevens and A. Roberts, New York, 2001, p. 124).
Another revelation for Delvaux came soon after his visit to the Spitzner Museum, when he discovered the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. In his Metaphysical works, De Chirico channelled an intense atmosphere that confronted the modern with the ancient. He made palimpsests in the mysterious views of towns with ancient statues in the foreground, a framework of Renaissance architecture, and locomotives puffing across the backdrop. In L'Été, Delvaux appears to have taken some of these elements and reformulated them into his own distinctive visual language. It echoes De Chirico’s pictures, such as his 1913 masterpiece, The Soothsayer’s Recompense. That work, which used to be owned by the Belgian collector René Gaffé until acquired by Louise and Walter Arensberg, is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In it, the train and two palm trees are glimpsed over a wall in the background; in L'Été, the lamppost and trees beyond the hedge give a similar compositional effect. De Chirico superimposed elements from various timeframes in his works to give a sense of continuity and synchronicity, tapping into its mysterious superimpositions of existence. It is telling that Delvaux himself said, in terms that could apply equally to L'Été, ‘De Chirico’s cityscapes are silent poems’ (quoted in ibid., p. 125).
Adding to this poetry is the incorporation of the woman shown in a dress, looking away from the viewer. Delvaux has used this Rückenfigur, a figure seen from behind, in order to help draw the viewer into the composition. Faceless, and therefore anonymous, she becomes a cipher that adds inexorably to the air of mystery, echoing the works of earlier artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. In her posture and attire, she also recalls the pictures of Edvard Munch, the tormented Expressionist, for instance his variations upon the theme of Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) (an example is the 1905 picture in the Harvard Art Museums). This was a subject to which Munch returned several times throughout his career, as too was the motif of his 1896 drypoint Young Woman on the Beach. As in Munch’s pictures, the white dress of the woman in L'Été serves as a sliver of white against the darker backdrop, in this case provided by the hedge near which she stands. Her luminosity adds to the spiritual dimension of the painting, as well as introducing an element of human drama – perhaps of longing, reverberating with an emotional undertone akin to that which characterised Munch’s pictures.
As befits a work of this finesse and complexity, L'Été has had a distinguished existence. It was originally commissioned by Nizette Camu, well-known for her passion for trees, and her husband Louis Camu who, before the Second World War, had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Belgian government before becoming a banker and, during the Occupation, a hero of the Resistance, for which he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp (see ‘Louis Camu, 71, Banker in Belgium World War II Resistance Leader’ in New York Times, 23 November 1976, p. 29). The Camus were prominent collectors and supporters of modern art, who owned other masterpieces including one of René Magritte’s most important paintings, Les affinités électives. Fittingly, L'Été has featured in a range of publications on Delvaux, as well as several lifetime exhibitions, emphasising its importance.
By the time Delvaux painted L'Été, his dreamlike visions had become icons in their own rights. He was a celebrated international artist, his fame based on these visions. Indeed, it is telling that L'Été was in fact a commission, and featured in a number of lifetime exhibitions and publications. It had been in the 1930s that the subject of women, often wearing little partly in order to remove any sense of a specific historical moment, entered his works. Despite their nudity, they often appear almost vestal, proceeding through the arena of the composition as though directed by their own mystical and mysterious purposes. The figure on the left in particular is shown in the attitude of someone making an offering in an ancient frieze. Over the years, Delvaux created numerous variations upon this theme, tapping into it for its oneiric sense of mystery and possibility. Indeed, he painted another composition entitled L'Été a quarter of a century earlier, in 1938 (now in the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland).
Two key biographical moments in Delvaux’s life introduced the women who became the subjects of his pictures. The first was the death of his mother; the second, his visit to the Spitzner anatomical museum. There, amongst the various models, waxworks and pictures showing illnesses and treatments, was the ‘Sleeping Venus,’ an automaton that appeared to breathe despite the womb being opened by four disembodied male hands. Straddling the borders of the real and the represented, of the inert and the alive, this became a springboard for his own explorations of a world, a universe, that was at once tethered to our own and yet somehow utterly impossible and detached. The line between death and life was one that Delvaux probed in many works, beginning in the 1930s. The female flesh that he showed appeared cold yet supple. When he began to incorporate skeletons in some of his compositions, they were often imbued with a vitality that his female figures deliberately eschewed. Instead, they were granted an esoteric elegance as they seemed to sleepwalk through his imagined universe.
For Delvaux, the sense of women as the roots of creation was key to their presence in his works. This related to the concept of motherhood. After all, life begins with birth, the ultimate act of human creation. For Delvaux, women were the wellsprings of humanity. It was this aspect of femininity that resulted in the women often being depicted either naked or with drifts of material hanging like drapery, as in most of the figures in L'Été. Delvaux explained this decision: ‘They come from the very roots of the history of art. They just arrive,’ he said. ‘They’re naked because I can’t dress them as if they belonged to some particular era of history. They’re timeless’ (quoted in M-F. Saurat, ‘Interview,’ in R. Thérond, ed., Encounters with Great Painters, trans. M. Stevens and A. Roberts, New York, 2001, p. 124).
Another revelation for Delvaux came soon after his visit to the Spitzner Museum, when he discovered the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. In his Metaphysical works, De Chirico channelled an intense atmosphere that confronted the modern with the ancient. He made palimpsests in the mysterious views of towns with ancient statues in the foreground, a framework of Renaissance architecture, and locomotives puffing across the backdrop. In L'Été, Delvaux appears to have taken some of these elements and reformulated them into his own distinctive visual language. It echoes De Chirico’s pictures, such as his 1913 masterpiece, The Soothsayer’s Recompense. That work, which used to be owned by the Belgian collector René Gaffé until acquired by Louise and Walter Arensberg, is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In it, the train and two palm trees are glimpsed over a wall in the background; in L'Été, the lamppost and trees beyond the hedge give a similar compositional effect. De Chirico superimposed elements from various timeframes in his works to give a sense of continuity and synchronicity, tapping into its mysterious superimpositions of existence. It is telling that Delvaux himself said, in terms that could apply equally to L'Été, ‘De Chirico’s cityscapes are silent poems’ (quoted in ibid., p. 125).
Adding to this poetry is the incorporation of the woman shown in a dress, looking away from the viewer. Delvaux has used this Rückenfigur, a figure seen from behind, in order to help draw the viewer into the composition. Faceless, and therefore anonymous, she becomes a cipher that adds inexorably to the air of mystery, echoing the works of earlier artists such as Caspar David Friedrich. In her posture and attire, she also recalls the pictures of Edvard Munch, the tormented Expressionist, for instance his variations upon the theme of Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) (an example is the 1905 picture in the Harvard Art Museums). This was a subject to which Munch returned several times throughout his career, as too was the motif of his 1896 drypoint Young Woman on the Beach. As in Munch’s pictures, the white dress of the woman in L'Été serves as a sliver of white against the darker backdrop, in this case provided by the hedge near which she stands. Her luminosity adds to the spiritual dimension of the painting, as well as introducing an element of human drama – perhaps of longing, reverberating with an emotional undertone akin to that which characterised Munch’s pictures.
As befits a work of this finesse and complexity, L'Été has had a distinguished existence. It was originally commissioned by Nizette Camu, well-known for her passion for trees, and her husband Louis Camu who, before the Second World War, had a meteoric rise through the ranks of the Belgian government before becoming a banker and, during the Occupation, a hero of the Resistance, for which he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp (see ‘Louis Camu, 71, Banker in Belgium World War II Resistance Leader’ in New York Times, 23 November 1976, p. 29). The Camus were prominent collectors and supporters of modern art, who owned other masterpieces including one of René Magritte’s most important paintings, Les affinités électives. Fittingly, L'Été has featured in a range of publications on Delvaux, as well as several lifetime exhibitions, emphasising its importance.