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拍品專文
‘The words dictated by our blood sometimes seem mysterious to us. Here it seems we are ordered to open up magic niches in the trees’ (R. Magritte quoted in D. Sylvester, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, London, 1993, p. 384). These words were René Magritte’s only direct attempt to explain the evocative title shared by an iconic series of images including La voix du sang, the present work. Translated by David Sylvester as ‘blood will tell’, or literally, ‘the voice of blood,’ the phrase conjures a viscerally eerie mood, the feeling that something is lurking just beneath the canvas (ibid.) For Magritte, however, the something else is at play, and he saw in this arrangement a call to uncover that which is hidden.
Claude Spaak argues that Magritte first found the seed of what would become La voix du sang in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865. The Surrealists saw the playful, mind-altering story as an almost antecedent to their intervention in modern art in the twentieth century. Indeed, certain images made a lasting impression on Magritte, including Alice’s ability to step directly into a tree trunk. Sylvester has suggested that this literary influence, along with an illustration of cork harvesting in the Petit Larousse encyclopaedia, inspired Magritte to paint L’arbre savant, 1935 (Sylvester, no. 384; Private collection). It was here that Magritte first explored the image that would become La voix du sang. A tree with four cubbies occupies an ambiguous setting, each containing a different mysterious object: a lit candle, a pyramid, and a small bunch of wire. The contents of the top drawer are hidden from view.
After this initial painting, it would be twelve years before Magritte returned to the subject. In 1947, he reincarnated his tree-cabinet, painting the first iteration of La voix du sang (Sylvester, no. 625; Private collection). In place of the previous objects, he has filled his cubbies with a sphere and a house. Once again, the top door is partially closed. This new selection only serves to further the mystery of the scene, which seems to have been cleaved from a dreamworld. Magritte would revisit the imagery of La voix du sang, both in the close-cropped and the full-scene compositions, executing gouaches, lithographs, and two final canvases in oil in 1959 and 1961 (Sylvester, nos. 905 and 928; Museum moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna and Private collection) at the request of Alexander Iolas and on commission, respectively. It is telling that when Magritte was commissioned to design a monumental mural to envelop those who step into the Casino Communale at Knokke-le-Zoute, the imagery of La voix du sang featured prominently among his most renowned motifs.
Claude Spaak argues that Magritte first found the seed of what would become La voix du sang in Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865. The Surrealists saw the playful, mind-altering story as an almost antecedent to their intervention in modern art in the twentieth century. Indeed, certain images made a lasting impression on Magritte, including Alice’s ability to step directly into a tree trunk. Sylvester has suggested that this literary influence, along with an illustration of cork harvesting in the Petit Larousse encyclopaedia, inspired Magritte to paint L’arbre savant, 1935 (Sylvester, no. 384; Private collection). It was here that Magritte first explored the image that would become La voix du sang. A tree with four cubbies occupies an ambiguous setting, each containing a different mysterious object: a lit candle, a pyramid, and a small bunch of wire. The contents of the top drawer are hidden from view.
After this initial painting, it would be twelve years before Magritte returned to the subject. In 1947, he reincarnated his tree-cabinet, painting the first iteration of La voix du sang (Sylvester, no. 625; Private collection). In place of the previous objects, he has filled his cubbies with a sphere and a house. Once again, the top door is partially closed. This new selection only serves to further the mystery of the scene, which seems to have been cleaved from a dreamworld. Magritte would revisit the imagery of La voix du sang, both in the close-cropped and the full-scene compositions, executing gouaches, lithographs, and two final canvases in oil in 1959 and 1961 (Sylvester, nos. 905 and 928; Museum moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna and Private collection) at the request of Alexander Iolas and on commission, respectively. It is telling that when Magritte was commissioned to design a monumental mural to envelop those who step into the Casino Communale at Knokke-le-Zoute, the imagery of La voix du sang featured prominently among his most renowned motifs.