#594 Erich von Stroheim

Thirty years on from the premiere
of The Merry Widow, a silent movie
directed by Erich von Stroheim,
come these two caricatures. One
is a take on the roles he played in
films after being a director was
made too difficult for him. The
other an invitation to the anniver-
sary of that first showing of the
only movie of his that could be
considered a box office success.


Left like that, it seems a compact
story spread over three decades.
Left like that, it leaves so much
out. Time is a series of triggers &
outcomes; but an outcome can
also be a trigger. The first trigger
in this sequence is Attaché d'am-
bassade, (Embassy Attaché), a com-
edy written in 1861 by Henri
Meilhac, an opera librettist &
playwright. The outcome, some
44 years later, is an operetta, Die
lustige Witwe, with the music by
Franz Lehár & a libretto based on
Meilhac's play. & that, in turn, is
not just the trigger for von Stro-
heim's film & six later versions
by various directors but also an
earlier one made in Hungary by
Mihály Kertész who later moved
to the U.S., changed his name to
Michael Curtiz, & made films as
diverse as Captain Blood, Casa-
blanca, & Yankee Doodle Dandy.


From those outcomes spread many
branch lines of varying length &
importance. Amongst the uncredited
extras in von Stroheim's movie were
Joan Crawford & Clark Gable. von
Stroheim's acting career included an
Oscar nomination for his performance
in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard,  The
castle tower that protrudes from the
bald skull of von Stroheim in Magritte's
Hommage is reprised as a unicorn's horn
in a number of paintings. & so it goes on,
present company hopefully included.

#593 Le Paysage de Baucis

I have discovered how to paint the emptiness between a hat 
& a man’s suit without suggesting ‘the invisible man.’ 
— René Magritte, letter to André Bosmans, 19 February 1966
Let's face it, the face isn't
there. Well, not completely.
The major aspects — eyes,
nose, lips — proportionate,
in place, posed & poised 
between a starched collar & 
a hat — no, not the usual 
bowler but a fedora this 
time around. Nothing there
to suggest the mythic con-
nection that the title implies
except perhaps disguise. Un-
less the emptiness of the suit
might be intended to conjure 
up the image of a landscape 
after a major flood has swept 
everything away. Which may
be a way to bring the myth be-
hind the title into the picture, 
though it won't be included in
this poem. Instead, a reference: 
Ovid, The Methamorphoses, Book
VIII, lines 611 through to 724.

#592 The Endless Chain

There is a serious motif to 
this piece — three men from
different eras on one horse
underlining the linear con-
tinuity of passing time & 
how similar things recur at 
intervals — but I find myself 
sidetracked thinking of the 
endless chain of variations 
that the passage of time has 
brought to that nursery rhyme 
with the opening line: Ride a 
cock-horse to Banbury Cross.  

#591 The Anniversary

Apple after apple has ruled 
this room & what's outside
it, but now, perhaps, some 
sort of coup d'état has taken 

place & that meteorite so 
often seen hovering above 
the sea has come ashore to 
usurp the — dare we call it 

that — throne. Now, with 
the curtain discretely moved 
aside, it is looking out at the 

plaza, no doubt hoping to 
see a crowd gathering there
to cheer its sudden ascension.

#590 Le Grand Air (2)

A fish emerges from the water as if to breathe.

There is a hot air balloon sailing overhead.

The fish sees the balloon, stretches out to try
& reach it.

The people in the balloon's basket do not see 
the fish or, if they do, they ignore it.

As the fish sinks back below the surface of the
water, it thinks: "If I was a bird I could fly up 
& over the balloon & crap on it from, as the say-
ing goes, a great height."

Such is life in the great outdoors.

#589 La Double Réalité

This was the first double of the body. 
From having been an assurance of immortality, 
it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.
Sigmund Freud: The Uncanny







The horse's bell rings silently. Death
is approaching. The two women who
are the same woman meet it head-on, 
open-eyed, though both have diffe-
ring views of how it looks. Depending
on one's point of view, perspective is
disconcerting. So, too, is being pinned 
to the wall, incomplete, what's left dis-
played in complementary directions. 
Beauty, we are reminded, is not the only
thing found in the eye of the beholder.

#588 The Cut-Glass Bath

The flaw dis-
covered at the

dress rehearsal. 
"The elephant's 


too wide to fit 
into the glass." 

"Will this giraffe 
do instead?"

#587 The Thought Which Sees

From the outside we see
items from other works 
thast we have seen before —
a crescent moon, clouds, 
sea, the house from The Em-
pire of Light. We see & think
about them, a deliberate act,
not the unconscious saying
"Look! This is what you're
missing." There is the same
man twice over, one night,
the other day. Slightly diff-
erent size. Most comment-
aries say they are facing one
another. I do not see it. To
me they are both facing the 
same way. That's what I
think I see. No inner thought
sees / says otherwise. I bow
to Magritte, whose thoughts
make the invisible visible but
still open to interpretation

#586 Le Ciel Meurtrier

Birds sing serenades to a dy-
ing forest, the musical scores
etched on their bodies. Some-

where in there also is the sky, 
its exhaled breath helping to
petrify the trees beneath. The 

birds display no visible blood, 
unlike that painting with the 
same name, from the same year.

#585 Le Cri de Coeur

Is hard to tell if the man is
watching the sun set, or 
is staring at the sun. Un-
likely the former, even though
the beauty of the landscape
as a setting might well in-
duce a cry from the heart. In 
favor of the latter are the 
dire stories we hear from 
childhood on of the painful 
deprivation of sight when
one looks for too long into
the sun's face. But why in-
dulge in supposition with
an artist who often plots a
distance between title & the
ingredients of the painting?
Rather stand back & welcome
what comes to your mind;
which, for me, are lines from
Guillaume Apollinaire's "Le
pont Mirabeau." Et nos amours
     Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.
                          & our loves
     Must I remember them
Joy always comes after pain.

#584 The Shadow & Its Shadow

Where does one start & the
other finish? & surely they're
mispositioned — she should
be behind him, the proverbial
power behind the throne, as it
were. Or should she? After all,
she was in front of him so often
as he painted her — at the piano,
smoking a cigarette, in the nude, as
she posed for him for more than forty
years. She thirteen, he fifteen when they
first met. Married nine years later after
they met again. Side by side this time, a mut-
ual shadow. Changing positions over the next
four decades. Until his death; & for her twenty
shadowless years, only shades, & the paintings
on the walls. Plus that unfinished one on an easel.






photo of René & Georgette Magritte by Paul Nougé. Brussels, 1932.