A fish emerges from the water 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.
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.
The flaw dis- covered at the dress rehearsal. "The elephant'stoo wide to fit into the glass." "Will this giraffe do instead?"
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
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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.
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.
