The exploration of a dream.

The Lovers II, Rene Magritte, 1928
References: Courtesy of www.ReneMagritte.org

“If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised.”
- Rene Magritte -

***

Frustrated desires, I have read.
Magritte's trauma, I have heard.
Unrequitted love, I learned.
Loneliness, I was told.

Well, it is none of the above I think.

There are two people, a woman and a man, embracing and kissing each other. Their faces are enshrouded with white foulards, expertly draped and neatly tucked into shirt and dress. The man is wearing a pristine white shirt with a point collar and a matching tie. She is wearing a sleeveless dress in red that shows her upper arm; it has a bow at the front, and for a beautiful contrast , it is adorned with piped white trimmings at the edges.

The lovers are in a room without windows, at last we can see no window. One side of the white ceiling is decorated with a white wooden trim. The couple is surrounded by two walls; the one in the man's back is ancient red, the other wall is painted in blue- grey but the colours vary in tone.

***

For me, this is a painting of absolute beauty. Some pieces have the power to make sense to me the moment I see them. This one seems to speak to me in a language only I seem to understand. It is a very personal language and so meaningful but of such clarity to me that I want to listen to the story it tells me. To me it talks about love.

This post is dedicated to someone very special.

We see a beautiful couple caught in a situation that is no real one but one that carries the full array of emotions love can evoke in us. The man and the woman are not twenty anymore, mid- thirties I would say.  Albeit we can see a passionate physical involvement, the way they respond to one another has nothing of the boisterousness and kind of cute clumsiness of first love in it.

These two have a great deal of experience in life. They are experienced in the matters of love as far as they have known it before they met. Both are well experienced in having been hurt. We do not know about how they met, but now they try to find out how a miracle fits into their lives. A miracle? Yes, a miracle that bears the chance that, despite their lives are quite different from one another's, and personal circumstances appear not compatible at first look, this story can melt into the wholeness of a beautiful thing that is called togetherness. A togetherness, however, that will not resemble the loving bond we commonly know when we think of the engagement between a woman and a man. How so?

Please look at the man and his position in the painting. He is holding her very closely to his body. One of his hands, as we can imagine, is probably at the level of her waist, the other one on her upper back. He is keeping his back more to the blue wall than to the red, as if slightly shielding her from the blue- grey background. Blue, to the eye, has opposite effects, does it not? It is on one hand very powerful, energetic, and optimistic a colour; on the other hand, it numbers among the cold tones. Hence the wall in the background in its blue- grey shades  presents the up and downs that happen to all of us when we love someone. The blue and grey stands for the beautiful disaster we know as feelings. The whole composition we can see here is a manifest of love, really. No question about that, but there's also a bit of tension in it. 

What I am referring to, though, is that life gets in the way sometimes, and we simply cannot act as we would perhaps like to. The sky is blue and sometimes grey. We admire it and find it a beautiful sensation to behold yet it seems too far away to touch it. The angled way of the man's body is a very powerful yet extremely loving gesture. With it, he is protecting her from the obstacles that might come their way; it shows that he is aware of the alternation of happy and satisfying but also challenging or even doubting moments they will meet in their relationship. He is wise. He is thoughtful. He cares.

Let us now look at her. When it comes to communicating with the body she is in no way inferior to him, is she? Her hands probably rest on his back and, same as he does with her, feeling his body under the fabric of his clothes. Her body responds to his way of kissing her. She is leaning back a little, her head tilted. Fascinatingly, her face is, despite the silk cloth, readable like an open book. Her eyes are closed, she kisses him back open- mouthed, and she is lost in the beautiful moment with him.

Interestingly, her dress has nearly the same colour as the red wall, a darkish red, earthy a bit. Is that of significance, anyway? Oh yes, it is. As much as his body interacts with the blue wall, the choice of the same colour for her dress and the sidewall is of utter meaning I believe. Red is the colour of love and sexuality, of fire, of life even. Red is also the connotation of passion and deep feelings. Red signifies attraction and eroticism. Red can be a warning. We can find all of these attributes in this painting too. The earth- coloured tone of her dress and similarly on the wall, these variations of red, tell us something about her. The woman is as grounded to earth and clear with the circumstances as he is. They are equal in this. Their temper may differ, their needs may differ from one another, their level of love to one another may differ, but this is all about finding a way to be together and also to maintain the needed individuality, maybe insularity even. This is all about space too. 

Did you notice the moulding on the ceiling? Why is it not attached to the entire room? Well, it would constrain them. It would cage them. And love must not do that. Everyone, of course, must find their own fundamental message in a painting. Magritte, intriguingly, did the impossible. He gave them items that beautifully deconstruct the whole meaning of togetherness and love, the foulards. Why on earth are they wearing veils?

Well, they are in a different dimension of togetherness. With the veils some of their senses have been made non- functional. They can not see each other. They can not really kiss each other. They can not smell each other's scent. They cannot hear each other's voice. The togetherness  is no real one, and they have not found the perfect way for both of them. The cloths are similarly arranged, but if we look closely, we see that the woman’s veil is a little looser at the neck than the man’s is. Can you see that? What we see here  is a beautiful but serious try to make it work, with all the wonderful contrasts of how a woman and how a man would do that. Love is farsighted and can see around corners and through folds to the secrets inside. As I suggested earlier, life is not always like we would have it. Neither is love. But there is always a way as long as both feel it is right and make the effort to really see each other. Yes, since this is never easy, there is the possibility that the veils will forever stay where they are. But the two are there with one another, and maybe little by little the veils can be removed one day. Until then, they will try to explore that dream. It is their dream. And their's alone.