The Journey of René Magritte from Giorgio de Chirico to Odilon Redon

The journey of René Magritte started from the universe of Giorgio de Chirico. There is no wonder, as the Metaphysical Interiors of de Chirico contain within themselves so many directions the twentieth century art would take, from surrealism to pop.

Look at Magritte's La Traversée Difficile (the left image), painted in 1926, and then look at de Chirico's Metaphysical Interior (the top image), done in 1916.

The hero of Magritte, his ambiguous bilboquet, is placed as an observer into the metaphysical world of de Chirico: world of ambiguous objects that could be anything, even gates to other worlds. A universe of universes, perhaps our own, as we are living surrounded by objects that can be just theatrical masks, or windows towards the infinite, or maybe both.
There is another version of La Traversée Difficile, made in 1963 (the bottom image). I saw it on the monograph of Suzi Gablik (where I discovered also the painting of de Chirico). I looked for both of them on the web, without having success. I found all kind of Difficult Crossings and Metaphysical Interiors, but the versions from 1963 and 1916. Eventually I asked a colleague to scan them both from the book of Suzy Gablik - so I was able to insert them here.
The version from 1963 is far from the one made in 1929. The bilboquet became an anthropomorphic spectator, dressed in a black suit, wearing a white shirt and a tie - the way the typical character of Magritte was dressed - his head remained the one of the bilboquet, only the eye became ominous. And the universe was reduced to the essentials. The objects -gates to other worlds - opened and all worlds joined together.


The version of 1963 had no more to do with Giorgio de Chirico. It was rather a replica to Vision, the charcoal drawing of Odilon Redon. The works of Redon were compared to the poetry of Baudelaire. A lone wolf, like Puvis de Chavannes, his contemporary, he created with his lithographs a dream world situated beyond the visible. Redon's Vision is looking at you the way saints from Byzantine icons are looking.

And Magritte made the whole journey back in time, from Giorgio de Chirico to Odilon Redon.

(René Magritte)