Magritte’s lovers II foretell of a world of a veiled kiss
Then there’s Molly Bloom, back when kissing was virus-free, remembering the kiss of her life
RENÉ MAGRITTE The Lovers II
Auguste Rodin’s brilliant and beautiful sculpture ‘The Kiss’ (1898) featured lovers kissin’ and a huggin’, and not a stitch on them. And we know who they are. He’s Paolo, she’s Francesca and they fell in love when together they read the love tale of Lancelot’s adulterous affair with Guinevere. And like many a love story, it’s complicated. Francesca is married, Paolo is married, but not to each other. Their 10-year affair ended when Giovanni, Francesca’s older and uglier husband who was also Paolo’s older, uglier brother, surprised them in bed and murdered them both. They ended up in hell.
In René Magritte’s The Lovers II, an oil on canvas, the lovers are unnamed and unrecognisable. They come with no back story and are not only fully clothed but are Covid ready. Though the man, collared and tied, and the woman, in a summer dress, certainly seem interested in each other, their veiled faces convey both intimacy and isolation. The indoor setting suggests privacy — ceiling, cornice, red wall — but, this being Magritte, is that back blue wall a darkening sky? Think hearts and red means love... red can also mean anger. Does blue, often associated with calm, create a calming effect here?
Magritte said he wanted the viewer to ask of his paintings, “What does it mean?” and he believed that “[it] does not mean anything because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable”. His paintings “conceal nothing” but he does say that “they evoke mystery”.
As for those concealed faces, Magritte’s mother took her own life by drowning when he was 14 and it was said that when Magritte witnessed her body being taken from the river Sambre, 17 days later, her wet nightdress covered and clung to her face. But it hasn’t been verified whether Magritte saw his drowned mother and he always denied that there was any link between his paintings and her death.
Odd, unsettling, surpris
ing, unusual, Magritte’s imagery sometimes has the freshness of a child’s imagination. In an interview he argued that “[we] are familiar with birds in cages; interest is awakened more readily if the bird is replaced by a fish or a shoe... It is possible to obtain a new image which will stand up to examination through having something final, something right about it.”
At first, as a wallpaper and mural designer and commercial artist, Magritte paid the bills. Later, he featured on a bank note. His surreal images are seen on book covers, in films. Paul Simon’s song ‘René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War’ is
about Monsieur et Madame Magritte and there’s a street in Brussels named ‘Ceci n’est pas une rue’ in his honour.
When Magritte painted
‘The Lovers II’ in 1928, he and his wife Georgette Berger were living in Paris, the City of Love. They had known each other since adolescence and were now married six years. In 1936 Magritte met performance artist Sheila Legge. She was 25, he was 38 and Magritte asked a friend Paul Colinet to distract Georgette while he pursued Legge. And distract he did. Colinet and Georgette then had an affair but in 1940 Magritte and Georgette got back together and stayed together to the end.
Unlike Paolo and Francesca, Magritte and Georgette lived a happyever-after life of sorts.
On St Valentine’s Day 2021, Nphet does not recommend kissing. In his forand-against kissing poem ‘Peck’, Brendan Kennelly says “A single kiss can lessen your life/ Expectancy by three minutes. Doctors believe.” But Kennelly adds that “Kissing’s a slimming aid too, every kiss/ Consumes three calories.”
And then there’s Molly Bloom, back when kissing was virus-free, no cloth covering her face, remembering the kiss of her life: “the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath”.