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People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.
—Rene Magritte
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I absolutely love this painting, The Banquet, from Rene Magritte in 1958. It has the effect where I don’t question anything about it. I just accept it as it is presented. I am not looking for symbolism in it at all, not looking for a reason why the red ball of sun is hovering low in front of the trees. The colors, the contrast, the composition– they create a whole sensation doesn’t need a why or what or how.
As Magritte points out, it contains poetry and mystery.
And that is something to try to understand. I know I often feel the need to try to explain my work, to point out where I find an emotional base in a piece. Sometimes that is easy, almost jumping out at you. But sometimes it is not so obvious and it is simply the mystery of the created feel, a great intangible pulse, that makes a particular painting work.
You see it, feel it, accept its reality yet you don’t fully understand the why and how.
And maybe that is just as it should be. Not all we behold can or should be explained. Sometimes, maybe we simply need to experience poetry and mystery.
Many years ago (1959!) John Ciardi published a book titled How Does a Poem Mean? His thesis was that asking “What does a poem mean?” was asking precisely the wrong question. No poem can be reduced to a summary sentence. It would be like saying The Odyssey is about a guy who traveled a lot, and then came home.
The more I thought about it today, the more that seemed to apply to paintings, too, and it seems to be the point you’ve made above.
Also: I’ve never seen that painting. It’s compelling, to say the least.
I hadn’t been aware of that painting until a year or so ago and it has stuck in my mind. I guess that’s the sign of a strong painting.