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Lot Essay
Under a dark night sky, set within a mountainous landscape strewn with rocks and a blazing fire, a strange, cloaked bird-like object looms imposingly in the foreground of René Magritte’s mysterious and deeply poetic Le temps jadis. The title – ‘Once Upon a Time’, or ‘The Olden Days’ – immediately transports the viewer into a fictional, fantastical realm, one in which the conventions of normality are turned on their head, and mystery reigns supreme. Painted in 1966, at the end of the artist’s prolific career, Le temps jadis combines many of the central motifs of Magritte’s distinctive and highly inventive pictorial iconography: the bilboquet, the bird, rocks and fire. With its incongruous juxtaposition of these ordinary, realistically rendered objects, Le temps jadis exemplifies Magritte’s life-long aim of revealing to the viewer the mystery that is inherent in the everyday world. ‘I do not juxtapose strange elements to shock,’ Magritte stated in 1965, a year before he painted the present work, ‘I describe my thoughts of mystery which is the union of everything and anything we know’ (Magritte, quoted in S. Whitfield, Magritte, exh. cat., London, 1992, p. 17). An extraordinary image filled with enigma and impossibility, this painting does not call upon the viewer to decode the objects and their meanings, but instead to enjoy, marvel at, and revel in the poetry created by these disparate forms.
Le temps jadis presents a variation of the artist’s iconic bilboquet – a motif that had dominated his art since the 1920s. Magritte took this object from a wooden child’s toy of the same name, which consists of a round ball with a hole in it, attached, with a piece of string, to a lathe-turned wooden baton that is pointed at one end and curved at the other. In Magritte’s version of this object, the wooden baton has a variety of visual allusions, appearing like a balustrade, a chess piece, a table, or a chair leg. These objects assumed a variety of pictorial roles in Magritte’s work: endowed with leafy branches to appear as trees in works such as Le Jockey perdu of 1926 (Sylvester I, no. 81), or depicted with an anthropomorphic element, such as an eye, or an arm, to serve as a quasi-human presence in paintings like La naissance de l’idole of 1926 (Sylvester I, no. 89).
In 1945, Magritte developed the form of the bilboquet, humanising it to become what Harry Torczyner described as an ‘anthropoid bilboquet’ (H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 152). The artist elongated the spherical shape of the ball into a bulbously spouted form that appears as the head of the anthropomorphic figure. Enlivened with naturalistically rendered arms and hands, and often adorned in red cloaks, these depersonalised figures were depicted in increasingly animated roles in Magritte’s work, often appearing in oratory or theatrical stances. These ambiguous objects, which Magritte described simply as his ‘wooden figures’, are in many ways reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s strange, inanimate mannequins – trovatori, muse, and more – that populate his celebrated Metaphysical works. Often standing for a human presence, these bilboquets became one of the most distinctive and prevalent motifs of Magritte’s art, appearing in various guises throughout the entirety of his career.
In Le temps jadis, Magritte has created a strange hybrid object that combines the cloaked bilboquet with the head of a bird. Though the human qualities have been removed and replaced with the eagle’s head, this figure still has an undeniably human presence. This metamorphosed, imaginary figure stands, cloaked in a deep red gown, imperiously surveying the scene before it, like a Roman sentinel guarding his territory. The year before Magritte painted Le temps jadis, he had depicted a similar composition in a work entitled La belle lurette (Sylvester III, no. 1023). Here, a similarly uninhabited landscape stretches before the same, cloaked bilboquet. In this version, however, the head of the eagle is replaced by a large, staring eyeball that likewise surveys the silent scene in front of it.
By placing recognisable, everyday objects in surreal combinations, Magritte stripped them of their normal associations, rendering them fantastical and uncanny. Composed of just a few elements – the bird-bilboquet, rocks and fire – Le temps jadis has a powerful simplicity. By limiting himself to just a few objects, Magritte presents the viewer with the strange array of unfathomable relationships that exist between them. For Magritte, this was one of the central aims of his art, as he explained: ‘In my paintings I showed objects situated in places where they are never actually encountered. That is to satisfy what is in most people a real if not conscious desire. Does not the ordinary painter try, within the limits set for him, to upset the order according to which he customarily sees objects arranged? He will timidly take a few little liberties, venture some vague allusions. In view of my determination to make the most familiar objects scream aloud, these had to be disposed in a new order and to be charged with a vibrant significance: the cracks we see on the fronts of our houses and the seams upon our faces, to me they looked more eloquent in the sky. Turned wooden table-legs lost the innocent existence we ascribe to them if they suddenly appeared towering up in a forest…’ (Magritte, quoted in P. Waldberg, René Magritte, Brussels, 1965, p. 116).
The eagle in Le temps jadis had also appeared almost twenty years earlier in a gouache entitled Le prince charmant (Sylvester IV, no. 1250). In this work, a cloaked bird in the same pose as that in Le temps jadis proudly regards a group of leaf-birds, with a mysterious, mountainous landscape beyond. The bird holds a central place in Magritte’s oeuvre, serving as a pictorial symbol of each of the different concepts and ideas that the artist was putting forth; a simple, yet poetic object that Magritte could play with, distort and alter to achieve his desired surreal and poetic effect. The bird appears in a multitude of different ways as he investigated the hidden realities of the everyday world: depicted as a mountain, growing out of a leaf, cut out from the sky or, as in the present work, as a metamorphosed object pictured within the strange, nocturnal landscape.
Painted at the end of his life, Le temps jadis combines a range of motifs that had occupied the artist from the very beginning of his career. More than this, however, the present work, with its enigmatic combination of invented and real objects, encapsulates Magritte’s aims of creating works which, in their own way, prompt a revelation for the viewer, removing the blinkers of everyday existence to reveal the magic that can be found in reality. When asked in September 1966 – the time that the artist was most likely completing Le temps jadis – what meaning lay behind a certain painting, Magritte responded, ‘There is nothing “behind” this image. (Behind the paint of the painting there is the canvas. Behind the canvas there is a wall, behind the wall there is…etc. Visible things always hide other visible things. But a visible image hides nothing)’ (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 1992, p. 408).
Le temps jadis presents a variation of the artist’s iconic bilboquet – a motif that had dominated his art since the 1920s. Magritte took this object from a wooden child’s toy of the same name, which consists of a round ball with a hole in it, attached, with a piece of string, to a lathe-turned wooden baton that is pointed at one end and curved at the other. In Magritte’s version of this object, the wooden baton has a variety of visual allusions, appearing like a balustrade, a chess piece, a table, or a chair leg. These objects assumed a variety of pictorial roles in Magritte’s work: endowed with leafy branches to appear as trees in works such as Le Jockey perdu of 1926 (Sylvester I, no. 81), or depicted with an anthropomorphic element, such as an eye, or an arm, to serve as a quasi-human presence in paintings like La naissance de l’idole of 1926 (Sylvester I, no. 89).
In 1945, Magritte developed the form of the bilboquet, humanising it to become what Harry Torczyner described as an ‘anthropoid bilboquet’ (H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, New York, 1977, p. 152). The artist elongated the spherical shape of the ball into a bulbously spouted form that appears as the head of the anthropomorphic figure. Enlivened with naturalistically rendered arms and hands, and often adorned in red cloaks, these depersonalised figures were depicted in increasingly animated roles in Magritte’s work, often appearing in oratory or theatrical stances. These ambiguous objects, which Magritte described simply as his ‘wooden figures’, are in many ways reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico’s strange, inanimate mannequins – trovatori, muse, and more – that populate his celebrated Metaphysical works. Often standing for a human presence, these bilboquets became one of the most distinctive and prevalent motifs of Magritte’s art, appearing in various guises throughout the entirety of his career.
In Le temps jadis, Magritte has created a strange hybrid object that combines the cloaked bilboquet with the head of a bird. Though the human qualities have been removed and replaced with the eagle’s head, this figure still has an undeniably human presence. This metamorphosed, imaginary figure stands, cloaked in a deep red gown, imperiously surveying the scene before it, like a Roman sentinel guarding his territory. The year before Magritte painted Le temps jadis, he had depicted a similar composition in a work entitled La belle lurette (Sylvester III, no. 1023). Here, a similarly uninhabited landscape stretches before the same, cloaked bilboquet. In this version, however, the head of the eagle is replaced by a large, staring eyeball that likewise surveys the silent scene in front of it.
By placing recognisable, everyday objects in surreal combinations, Magritte stripped them of their normal associations, rendering them fantastical and uncanny. Composed of just a few elements – the bird-bilboquet, rocks and fire – Le temps jadis has a powerful simplicity. By limiting himself to just a few objects, Magritte presents the viewer with the strange array of unfathomable relationships that exist between them. For Magritte, this was one of the central aims of his art, as he explained: ‘In my paintings I showed objects situated in places where they are never actually encountered. That is to satisfy what is in most people a real if not conscious desire. Does not the ordinary painter try, within the limits set for him, to upset the order according to which he customarily sees objects arranged? He will timidly take a few little liberties, venture some vague allusions. In view of my determination to make the most familiar objects scream aloud, these had to be disposed in a new order and to be charged with a vibrant significance: the cracks we see on the fronts of our houses and the seams upon our faces, to me they looked more eloquent in the sky. Turned wooden table-legs lost the innocent existence we ascribe to them if they suddenly appeared towering up in a forest…’ (Magritte, quoted in P. Waldberg, René Magritte, Brussels, 1965, p. 116).
The eagle in Le temps jadis had also appeared almost twenty years earlier in a gouache entitled Le prince charmant (Sylvester IV, no. 1250). In this work, a cloaked bird in the same pose as that in Le temps jadis proudly regards a group of leaf-birds, with a mysterious, mountainous landscape beyond. The bird holds a central place in Magritte’s oeuvre, serving as a pictorial symbol of each of the different concepts and ideas that the artist was putting forth; a simple, yet poetic object that Magritte could play with, distort and alter to achieve his desired surreal and poetic effect. The bird appears in a multitude of different ways as he investigated the hidden realities of the everyday world: depicted as a mountain, growing out of a leaf, cut out from the sky or, as in the present work, as a metamorphosed object pictured within the strange, nocturnal landscape.
Painted at the end of his life, Le temps jadis combines a range of motifs that had occupied the artist from the very beginning of his career. More than this, however, the present work, with its enigmatic combination of invented and real objects, encapsulates Magritte’s aims of creating works which, in their own way, prompt a revelation for the viewer, removing the blinkers of everyday existence to reveal the magic that can be found in reality. When asked in September 1966 – the time that the artist was most likely completing Le temps jadis – what meaning lay behind a certain painting, Magritte responded, ‘There is nothing “behind” this image. (Behind the paint of the painting there is the canvas. Behind the canvas there is a wall, behind the wall there is…etc. Visible things always hide other visible things. But a visible image hides nothing)’ (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 1992, p. 408).