When Magritte was 14, his mother committed suicide, drowning herself in a river. A book I have on Surrealism says that he actually saw his mother’s dead body, with her face veiled by the nightgown she was wearing. The book kind of links that moment to this picture. I have no idea how much truth there is in that, but I guess that such a moment must have affected his art in some way.
All of Magritte’s paintings are beautiful and absurd. They represent one of the more haunting sides of nonsense. (As an architectural structure, nonsense is difficult to comprehend. It is very uneven, with far too many sides and corners than is logically possible, and these are always shifting and changing.) I sometimes get the feeling that, within his paintings, there is something caught, something struggling violently to be heard- which is a bit of a contradiction, considering how serene his pictures are. I think that The Annunciation is one of his most beautiful works. It makes a sort of humming sound, a low, nasal melody, like an organic church organ.
The reason it makes that sort of a sound for me, though, is because that large, black thing in the centre reminds me of a church organ. Like a lot of things in Magritte paintings, it’s just sort of there, as out-of-place in its environment as I would be in a room full of people. Beside it stands two gigantic chess pieces, equally out of place, and placed before it is an unevenly cut piece of lace. Perhaps it represents part of his mother’s nightgown? The whole painting is so poignant and melancholy- it seems like the aftermath of an apocalypse, with the world cleaned up after its destruction, now devoid of all life, with these towering structures to replace them. Or maybe those structures are a human being. The title of the painting is a reference to the Virgin Mary: a mother. Probably the most famous mother of all time.
I feel like I can almost connect Magritte’s mother with Mary, but cannot quite manage it. Mary was visited by an Archangel, while Magritte’s mother took her own life. There is something that joins those two together.
Nice one
Thanks. 🙂
It does look amazing! I love most surrealist art, whether it is like dreams or nightmares! David Lynch used chess pieces in a scene in Twin Peaks so it is a strange coincidence that you put the David Lynch picture below!
I really like the painting, it reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich made more absurd and surreal! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk_Cliffs_on_R%C3%BCgen
Wow…I really need to watch more Lynch! 😀
Ooh, thanks for the Caspar Friedrich recommendation! His art is superb. 🙂