16. Le Fils de l'Homme

... being an attempt to decipher of the meaning of one of Renee Magritte's most celebrated paintings

Surrealist paintings were as much a part of my growing up in the 1970s as Bruce Lee, Evil Kinevil and Hammer House of Horror. At least I think that they were. I seem to remember that all of these topics had poster magazines dedicated to them. These were the size and shape of most of the other magazines that you could pick up at your local newsagents or W.H. Smiths, but instead of being a series of double pages stapled together in the traditional manner, they were composed of one single sheet which could be folded out like an ordnance survey map. One side had all the articles on it, laid out in regular magazine page sized sections and the other side was a giant poster which you could stick to your bedroom wall. Of course it had the fold lines on it, and if you folded and unfolded it too much, sometimes little holes would develop where those lines crossed, but it was an impressive poster, and much cheaper than the ones that you got packaged more carefully in cylindrical form, from Woolworths, featuring subjects like a tennis player who happened to be scratching her arse.

I’m doubting myself now. I’m pretty sure that there was a surrealist painting poster magazine. It may have been just a Salvador Dali one though, maybe in a series including other artists. I don’t suppose it was anywhere near as popular as Evil Kinevil or the arse scratch lass. And even the Salvador Dali posters were probably not as popular as I imagine, but I remember seeing The Persistence of Memory with its melting pocket watches on the walls of some of my friends. I had another Dali favourite on my wall, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. It probably came from a later edition of the poster magazine, when its circulation was failing. I liked it though. I probably liked the long words in the title as much as the painting.

There was something about Surrealism that linked the history of art to Monty Python’s Flying Circus on the telly and made it feel historic and cultural and bang up to date at the same time. Here was art that didn’t take itself too seriously, that broke the rules, that took the piss. I was all for it.

I think that René Magritte was my second favourite Surrealist artist, after Dali. In fact I struggle to think of any more apart from those two. The bowler hatted gent (self portrait?) who appeared in many of Magritte’s paintings, looked remarkably like John Cleese doing the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch on Monty Python, so that made him particularly impressive in my book.

Its no surprise then, that a poster of that famous Magritte painting in which the bowler hatted gent has his face obscured by an apple also graced my 1970s bedroom wall. It fitted in with my image as a weird skinny kid who was spectacularly awkward and unsuccessful with girls. I don’t think that it was from a poster magazine though. I have a feeling it was from a Sunday Times magazine, which would have fitted in with my image as a precocious twat who felt himself to be above dirtying his hands with his Dad’s Sunday Mirror.¹

Forty odd years later, Ian Parks introduced the concept of ekphrastic poetry to the Read to Write group. Ekphrasis is where works of visual art are expressed in poetry. We were all encouraged to try it out, and I could think of no subject more interesting than that famous Magritte painting in which the bowler hatted gent has his face obscured by an apple.

It is interesting to look at a piece of artwork with fresh eyes, especially in this internet age, when you can get up really close to it and read the observations of hundreds of art critics, both professional and amateur. It helps someone like me, who is not naturally an art critic, to look more deeply, and ask questions.

Why is it called le fils de l’homme? The son of man is what Jesus is called in the bible when he isn’t being called the son of God. It is an odd title. some people say that Adam is the man who every other man is the son of, and there’s an apple in the picture, maybe its Adam’s apple. Maybe he should have called it le pomme d’Adam.

Another interesting point is the seaside location. Being brought up in East Yorkshire, I have always imagined that it depicts Bridlington, or maybe Hornsea. Le pomme d'Adam en vacances au bord de la mer!

I had never noticed the man’s right elbow before studying it for the poem. It looks like his arm is on the wrong way around, even though both of his hands are in the right position in relation to the rest of him. You can also see just one of his eyes, which almost makes it look like he is staring at you from the other side of the apple. Is the apple attached to his hat? (why can’t you buy this as a fancy dress costume?) Or is it somehow glued to the end of his nose? Maybe it is a prosthetic nose, maybe his real one got shot off in the war. Maybe it is a terrible growth caused by his accidentally inhaling a pip.

I finally decided that the picture is a snapshot of a moment when the apple is momentarily passing the man’s face. I wasn’t sure why, or in which direction it was travelling, and that gave me an entry point to the poem.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of time, and how it might travel forwards or backwards according to one’s perspective. To link this with the choices that you may make at any given moment in time, and how they may affect your future, or be affected by your past - (or maybe vice versa) seemed a good move. I threw in a bit of original sin, and it started to feel a bit interesting. Yet in all honesty, I have no more idea of what its about that Magritte probably did about his painting.

Le fils de l’homme

As Newton noticed, Apples fall, due to the force of gravity.
It pulls things down and keeps our feet on Earth.
But apples may as well fall up, it’s all just relativity
In a ‘time means nothing’ quantum universe.
The direction of the apple matters not, to Magritte’s raincoat man
Up or down, it’s all the same to him.
Ascent, descent, it still obscures what he can see and what we can
Of his Schrodinger’s face of scowl slash grin

Is the apple of his eye a sin that he’s now contemplating?
Original or something done before?
Is he over it and rising fresh from depths of dark self-hating?
Or about to sink down way below the floor?
One arm swinging forward to the future, confidently set
The other, malformed, angled to the past
Anticipation, disappointment, excitement, regret
How long does a quantum moment last?

Horror, danger, monsters, sailor’s bloated corpses, senseless slaughter
All lie beneath that sea so calm and blue,
Whilst that sky of bleak grey cloud, contains no more than just pure and clear water
Life giving, affirmative and true.
Seize the moment! Live in it! Hide behind its joy and pleasure!
There’s the apple. Take it! Come what may.
All will be revealed in time. In time, sometime, in haste, at leisure
What direction time will take you, who can say? 

Its not Bridlington though is it? Maybe Spurn?

1. Thankfully, shortly after all this, Punk music came along and gave me some sort of a sense of identity that was a bit more modern, attractive and suitably teenage friendly. With a torn shirt, zippers in my trousers and my hair spiked up with soap, I could almost pass off as normal.