Perspective: The Balcony By Manet

By the end of the 1940s, Rene Magritte had a long period of experimentation behind him: during the Second World War, his style was influenced by Renoir and other Impressionists, and in 1947-1948 the artist created bright and deliberately rough works reminiscent of the work of the Fauves.

However, by 1949, the painter finally returned to magical realism, which once already brought him recognition. At this time, Magritte created a series of works "Perspectives": the artist replaced the heroes of famous paintings with coffins - a kind of irony!

The most famous painting in the series is Manet's Balcony Perspective, created in 1950. The original version of the canvas, written by the inspirer and leader of the Impressionists, depicted quite real people: the artist Berthe Morisot, the violinist Fanny Klaus, the artist Antoine Guillemé and Manet's adopted son Leon Coella Leenhoff. By the way, Manet's "Balcony" is also a free interpretation of another painting: the masters inspired "Mahi on the balcony" by Goya.

Magritte's "perspective" repeats the location of Manet's characters in space and recreates the surrounding environment, but plays with the viewer's perception: we do not know whether the characters of the canvas are dead, hidden from the audience by being placed in such harsh "shells", or are completely transformed into these ominous objects.

Taking the image of the balcony as a starting point, Magritte reminds us that the safest and most comfortable places can be fraught with danger.

The famous art critic Siegfried Gore writes about the "Perspective of the" Balcony "": “Already critical of Manet's contemporaries did not approve of the coldness of his composition with green shutters - precisely the aspect that Magritte reinforced in his interpretation, despite his mostly negative perception at the time. The artist transferred the immobility and pallor of the three people on the balcony, the obvious inner emptiness and lack of interaction between them to a group of coffins. In other words, instead of creating an alternative to Manet, he made the atmosphere of the work more absurd and frightening. "

Today the painting by René Magritte is in the collection of the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts.