.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Magritte.
Executed in 1963, Les bijoux indiscrets is a work which shows a hand which has a face, its eyes closed, on its wrist. Magritte had originally intended to call the oil version of this work, which he conceived of in 1962 but only finally painted during the following year, the same this work on paper was created, La divine comédie, but according to the catalogue raisonné changed his mind following the suggestion of his friend Paul Scutenaire. Instead of the Dante reference, it was replaced by one to Denis Diderot's first novel, a satire in which a monarch had a magic ring able to make the genitals of women speak. In an old English translation, the bijoux were the 'toys', or genitals, of the women, making the play on the notion of transformative and elusive jewels evoked by Magritte's picture all the more complex. For here, in place of a bracelet, is a human face: this is, indeed, an indiscreet jewel; however, in the eighteenth-century novel the indiscretion was shared by the ring which was able to gain such voluble responses from the women of the fictitious Congo of which the main protagonist was sultan and by those women's no-longer-private parts themselves. This title therefore adds an extra layer of Surrealism to the work, paying homage to one of the movement's predecessors.
Les bijoux indiscrets is a preparatory work for a lithograph that Magritte created for XXe Siècle, which was published at Christmas the same year. Clearly, the artist was returning to and embellishing his original composition, which had shown a simple landscape as a backdrop to the articulate hand. Here, rather than oils, he has created an impressive sense of density through the incredibly painstaking hatching that he has used, visible in particular in the horizon which, after proceeding almost straight across a large part of the composition, then rises, echoing the wrist itself.
Executed in 1963, Les bijoux indiscrets is a work which shows a hand which has a face, its eyes closed, on its wrist. Magritte had originally intended to call the oil version of this work, which he conceived of in 1962 but only finally painted during the following year, the same this work on paper was created, La divine comédie, but according to the catalogue raisonné changed his mind following the suggestion of his friend Paul Scutenaire. Instead of the Dante reference, it was replaced by one to Denis Diderot's first novel, a satire in which a monarch had a magic ring able to make the genitals of women speak. In an old English translation, the bijoux were the 'toys', or genitals, of the women, making the play on the notion of transformative and elusive jewels evoked by Magritte's picture all the more complex. For here, in place of a bracelet, is a human face: this is, indeed, an indiscreet jewel; however, in the eighteenth-century novel the indiscretion was shared by the ring which was able to gain such voluble responses from the women of the fictitious Congo of which the main protagonist was sultan and by those women's no-longer-private parts themselves. This title therefore adds an extra layer of Surrealism to the work, paying homage to one of the movement's predecessors.
Les bijoux indiscrets is a preparatory work for a lithograph that Magritte created for XXe Siècle, which was published at Christmas the same year. Clearly, the artist was returning to and embellishing his original composition, which had shown a simple landscape as a backdrop to the articulate hand. Here, rather than oils, he has created an impressive sense of density through the incredibly painstaking hatching that he has used, visible in particular in the horizon which, after proceeding almost straight across a large part of the composition, then rises, echoing the wrist itself.