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Lot Essay
L'éclair is the first of two gouaches executed by René Magritte after the original oil of the same subject but titled 'Le plagiat' that he painted in 1940.
Magritte discussed the idea in 1937: ''This bouquet is transparent' was one of the examples he proposed there. He reiterated the image in 1942 ... when, in the game he and some friends played of being an Academy concerned with re-defining common words in a poetic way, he defined 'garden' as 'a space set between a landscape and a bunch of flowers' (Activité Surréaliste, p. 324, quoted in D. Sylvester (ed.), René Magritte, Catalogue raisonné, vol II, Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931 - 1948, Antwerp, 1993, p. 276).
Images such as L'éclair suggest a pictorial equivalent to ideas of simultaneous existence and multiple viewpoints. One is never quite sure whether the bouquet has become transparent, allowing the viewer to see behind it, or if possibly the garden exists simultaneously in some other interior dimension. Certainly L'éclair illustrates in the most beautiful and dazzling way the artist's own redefinition of the word 'garden'.
Magritte discussed the idea in 1937: ''This bouquet is transparent' was one of the examples he proposed there. He reiterated the image in 1942 ... when, in the game he and some friends played of being an Academy concerned with re-defining common words in a poetic way, he defined 'garden' as 'a space set between a landscape and a bunch of flowers' (Activité Surréaliste, p. 324, quoted in D. Sylvester (ed.), René Magritte, Catalogue raisonné, vol II, Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931 - 1948, Antwerp, 1993, p. 276).
Images such as L'éclair suggest a pictorial equivalent to ideas of simultaneous existence and multiple viewpoints. One is never quite sure whether the bouquet has become transparent, allowing the viewer to see behind it, or if possibly the garden exists simultaneously in some other interior dimension. Certainly L'éclair illustrates in the most beautiful and dazzling way the artist's own redefinition of the word 'garden'.