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Lot Essay
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
L'éternité expresses the full force of Magritte's alien yet authoritative visual power. Unlike many of his other works, however, L'éternité was not the result of an immediate inspiration, a vision or conception, but instead evolved from an idea given to Magritte by his friend Claude Spaak, the first owner of the painting. Spaak claimed that his original notion was the sight of a gallery wall hung with paintings, and between them stood a large ham. However, by December 1935, this idea had already evolved significantly in Magritte's mind:
I am busy at the moment on a rather amusing picture: in a museum, there are three stands against a wall, with statues of Dante and Hercules to the left and right while the one in the centre supports a magnificent pig's head with parsley in its ears and a lemon in its mouth' (Magritte, letter to Paul Eluard, December 1935, quoted in D. Sylvester and S. Whitfield, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II: Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931-1948, London, 1993, p. 212).
In the final state of his conception, Margritte employed busts of Christ and Dante with a slab of butter placed in the middle. These epic busts give the impression of being relics that have survived--if only as fragments--through centuries of turmoil representing the idea of 'eternity' in the title. However, between them, monumental in its own way, is the fresh but perishable butter, a jarring contrast that assaults the viewer's rational sensibilities. Time, and the authority of the museum, have been turned on their heads, as Magritte forces his museum-goer to look beyond his preconceptions and to contemplate the internal and external reality of this painted world in all its paradoxical wonder.
L'éternité expresses the full force of Magritte's alien yet authoritative visual power. Unlike many of his other works, however, L'éternité was not the result of an immediate inspiration, a vision or conception, but instead evolved from an idea given to Magritte by his friend Claude Spaak, the first owner of the painting. Spaak claimed that his original notion was the sight of a gallery wall hung with paintings, and between them stood a large ham. However, by December 1935, this idea had already evolved significantly in Magritte's mind:
I am busy at the moment on a rather amusing picture: in a museum, there are three stands against a wall, with statues of Dante and Hercules to the left and right while the one in the centre supports a magnificent pig's head with parsley in its ears and a lemon in its mouth' (Magritte, letter to Paul Eluard, December 1935, quoted in D. Sylvester and S. Whitfield, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II: Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931-1948, London, 1993, p. 212).
In the final state of his conception, Margritte employed busts of Christ and Dante with a slab of butter placed in the middle. These epic busts give the impression of being relics that have survived--if only as fragments--through centuries of turmoil representing the idea of 'eternity' in the title. However, between them, monumental in its own way, is the fresh but perishable butter, a jarring contrast that assaults the viewer's rational sensibilities. Time, and the authority of the museum, have been turned on their heads, as Magritte forces his museum-goer to look beyond his preconceptions and to contemplate the internal and external reality of this painted world in all its paradoxical wonder.