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Lot Essay
Standing statuesque against a twilit sky, the trio of trees at the heart of Les barricades mystérieuses appear to keep watch, huddling together in a tight formation, as if they are waiting to spring into action. At their centre stands a gigantic arbre-feuille, or leaf-tree, a motif that had first appeared in Magritte’s oeuvre in the 1935 composition La géante. Representing one of the most important moments of poetic inspiration in his career, Magritte believed that in this simple visual trope he had found the solution to what he saw as the Surreal conundrum of the tree. Conflating the micro with the macro, the organism as a whole and its constituent, fragmentary parts, the device of a ‘large leaf of the stem… which was a trunk directly planted in the ground’ introduced a completely new understanding of the character of the object to his compositions, fulfilling his search for ‘the quality that is specific to a tree but which runs counter to the concept of a tree…’ (Magritte writing to Breton, quoted in L. Scutenaire, Avec Magritte, Brussels, 1977, p. 84).
In Les barricades mystérieuses, the surreal nature of the central monumental leaf is heightened by the presence of two ‘normal’ trees flanking it, their profiles echoing the shape of the leaf-tree and yet simultaneously heightening its uncanny strangeness. Magritte had previously explored the idea of combining different types of trees alongside one another in the 1957 composition Le concerte du matin, introducing a single regular tree into a glade of gigantic, perfectly shaped arbres-feuilles. Here, by reducing the rest of the composition to a series of loosely painted stretches of variegated blue and removing any extraneous detail, Magritte creates a lyrical work that is all the more concentrated and direct in its demand that the viewer reconsider the sheer mystery and wonder of the tree. As Magritte explained, ‘For me it’s not a matter of painting “reality” as though it were readily accessible to me and to others, but of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery…’ (Magritte cited in H. Torczyner, Magritte, New York, 1977, p. 203).
The present gouache emerged during a period of fervent creativity for Magritte, as he searched for possible motifs for a commission he had received from the Belgian government in 1958. The project, which called for a mural for one of the rooms situated on the ground floor of the newly built Palais des Congrès in Brussels, occupied him for almost three years before his designs were approved by the State. Indeed, Les barricades mystérieuses may have formed part of the artist’s preliminary studies for the work – apart from sharing the same title with the finished mural, the gouache explores a similar juxtaposition between the arbre-feuille and a more familiar tree, presenting an otherworldly, poetic realm that is at once intensely familiar and sublimely disconcerting in its dreamlike atmosphere.
In Les barricades mystérieuses, the surreal nature of the central monumental leaf is heightened by the presence of two ‘normal’ trees flanking it, their profiles echoing the shape of the leaf-tree and yet simultaneously heightening its uncanny strangeness. Magritte had previously explored the idea of combining different types of trees alongside one another in the 1957 composition Le concerte du matin, introducing a single regular tree into a glade of gigantic, perfectly shaped arbres-feuilles. Here, by reducing the rest of the composition to a series of loosely painted stretches of variegated blue and removing any extraneous detail, Magritte creates a lyrical work that is all the more concentrated and direct in its demand that the viewer reconsider the sheer mystery and wonder of the tree. As Magritte explained, ‘For me it’s not a matter of painting “reality” as though it were readily accessible to me and to others, but of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery…’ (Magritte cited in H. Torczyner, Magritte, New York, 1977, p. 203).
The present gouache emerged during a period of fervent creativity for Magritte, as he searched for possible motifs for a commission he had received from the Belgian government in 1958. The project, which called for a mural for one of the rooms situated on the ground floor of the newly built Palais des Congrès in Brussels, occupied him for almost three years before his designs were approved by the State. Indeed, Les barricades mystérieuses may have formed part of the artist’s preliminary studies for the work – apart from sharing the same title with the finished mural, the gouache explores a similar juxtaposition between the arbre-feuille and a more familiar tree, presenting an otherworldly, poetic realm that is at once intensely familiar and sublimely disconcerting in its dreamlike atmosphere.