René Magritte

Painted in 1935, La Réponse imprévue is one of Magritte’s earliest variations on the theme of a closed door, broken by a hole that reveals a landscape or darkness behind it. This image was first used in the painting of the same title of 1933 (fig. 1), a larger version of the present work (81 by 54cm.), and derived from the artist’s newly developed method: that of establishing a ‘problem’ and finding a ‘solution’ to it. ‘The problem of the door called for an opening one could pass through. In La Réponse imprévue, I showed a closed door in a room; in the door an irregular-shaped opening revealed the night’ (R. Magritte, La Ligne de Vie, lecture of 20^th November 1938). The opening suggested itself as a solution to the problem of the door, as the door is an opening, and its purpose is to provide passage, access to what lies beyond.

At the heart of La Réponse imprévue lies the paradox of the open/closed door, the act of concealing and revealing. The juxtaposition of opposing ideas is one of Magritte’s most frequently used devices, with which he paints mysterious images and creates new meanings. The present work shows both light and darkness; the door is closed as well as open, it has a dual role of hiding and exposing what is behind it. By confronting these contrasted elements, Magritte evokes the essential surrealist paradigm of questioning the significance and purpose we attribute to various objects, and creating new meanings by placing these objects in new and unexpected contexts.

The mysterious, enigmatic atmosphere of the present work is further emphasised by the notable absence of human beings. While the unpopulated room contains no elements that would indicate man’s presence, the hole in the door, though of an undefined shape, is suggestive of a human form. The sharp-edged shape of the opening can be traced back to the paper cut-outs that Magritte first developed in his early paintings, drawings and papiers collés of the 1920s (fig. 2). Gaping onto the darkness of the room in the background, the hole presents a subtle, yet haunting suggestion of a standing man or an embracing couple.

In other variations on this theme, Magritte placed different objects behind the door, or sometimes window, as in La Lunette d’approche of 1963 (fig. 3). Sometimes the hole in the door reveals the night sky with crescent moon or, as in La Perspective amoureuse of 1935 (fig. 4), a complex seascape with a tree-leaf, a house and a bell on its top. In the present painting, however, the artist has focused his attention on a minimal amount of objects, reducing the image to its clearest, most vital elements. The interior of the room is reduced to the basic components: the plain, monochromatic wall, simple white door, and a wooden floor – Magritte’s signature motif that appears in various guises from his early works onwards. The view through the door reveals a room enveloped in darkness, in which no objects are visible except for the wooden floorboards that provide a sense of continuous space.

By reducing his visual language to a small number of elements, Magritte focuses his image on the essence of the paradox he is exploring, thus achieving a stronger impact on the viewer. As he explained in a letter to André Bosmans: ‘If a simple image is wilfully complicated, it is more the result of a concern for fantasy than of a freedom attentive to a real and irreducible complexity. Thus, a door with an opening hollowed out to allow one to go in and out is at once simple and complex. It’s out of the question to complicate this image with an overburden of unimportant events merely for the sake of fulfilling some puerile fantasy’ (R. Magritte, Letter to André Bosmans, 2^nd January 1964).

Fig. 1, René Magritte, La Réponse imprévue, 1933, oil on canvas, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels
Fig. 2, René Magritte, Le Double secret, 1927, oil on canvas, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
Fig. 3, René Magritte, La Lunette d’approche, 1963, oil on canvas, The Menil Collection, Houston
Fig. 4, René Magritte, La Perspective amoureuse, 1935, oil on canvas, Private Collection