Rene Magritte - Golconda
The Surrealist Art auction that took place in London on March 7th . “L'ami intime” a piece by Belgian surrealist René Magritte, sell for the highest price in the room at ￡33.7 million.
This reminds me of Rene Magritte’s 1953 oil painting ”Golconda “ . which combines Magritte's iconic image of a man in a bowler hat with a philosophical exploration and an ambivalent link between the title and the painting.
The artwork Golconda portrays a group of men who look almost identical, wearing dark coats and bowler hats. They appear to be either large raindrops or floating like balloons against a backdrop of buildings and a blue sky. The men are arranged in a diamond-shaped grid, facing the viewer and stepping back in layers. Additionally, there are numerous blurred figures dressed in black floating alone in the air. The artwork humorously depicts Wall Street's golden boy living on the razor's edge.
The title Golconda came from the idea of Magritte's poet friend, Louis Scutenaire. Golconda is a ruined city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, near Hyderabad, India's fourth-largest city. It was the capital of two kingdoms from the mid-14th century to the end of the 17th century. The region became famous as the center of the legendary diamond industry. According to the Oxford Dictionary, Golconda is a synonym for "mine of wealth" and means " mountain of treasure ".
information sourced from the Menil Collection Museum in Houston, USA