An apple a day keeps the doctor away, so they say, but not this apple by René Magritte–bring in the psychoanalyst! Only Magritte, the enfant terrible of the Surrealists, could subject an innocent apple to such existential crisis. Sure he loved his apples, but it’s a good mystery plot that really gets him off. How did this mutant fruit get into the room? Whose room is this? Whodunnit?
The Listening Room (1952) houses one of the most sensuous apples in all of art (okay, maybe a close second to Cézanne). Such loving attention was given to this strange fruit. Devoid of hurry or emotion, each brushwork is complicit in the overall seduction of the eye into relishing its smooth apple-ness. The mind completes the visual experience: imagine its crunch, its sweetness, its physicality. Yum.
But look again: there’s something sinister at play. Cloistered in this impossible space, the apple’s confinement is nothing but disconcerting. What wrong did it do to suffer such fate? Original Sin? Lock the door and throw the key, there’s no escape, definitely not through that mockery of a window. This is a freak on display, but ladies and gentlemen, stand back! This 10,000kg of organic matter might just crush you.
And what of that title if not to throw in another wrench? Just what are we supposed to be listening to? Perhaps that 1914 smash hit by Giorgio De Chirico, Song of Love (Le Chant d’amour), whom Magritte was so very taken by. This green apple must surely be a tribute to De Chirico’s enigmatic green sphere.
The best Magrittes are also the most abstruse, and for me that’s the thrill. I much prefer art cooked in paradox with less condiments. The artist once mused, “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.” In that conflict zone I enjoy my daily apple.
