Nona Avenida, Nova York, Estados Unidos (Ninth Avenue) - George Copeland Ault

Nona Avenida, Nova York, Estados Unidos (Ninth Avenue) - George Copeland Ault
Nova York - Estados Unidos
Coleção privada
OST - 61x45 - 1924

Living in Greenwich Village in the 1920s, George Ault depicted the buildings of New York City with a distinct style of simplified forms, solid colors and extreme angles. Painted in 1924, Ninth Avenue is a dynamic example of Ault’s unique form of Precisionism, incorporating elements of Surrealism to create a sense of disquiet amidst the vibrant streets of the city.
In the present work, Ault takes a perspective from under the Ninth Avenue El, which was the first elevated railway in New York and operated between 1868 and 1940. Highlighting the sleek lines and repetitive nature of the architecture around this modern transportation hub, Ault minimizes the cityscape to its most basic geometric forms and executes the composition in flat planes of primary colors. In the foreground, an elegant woman walks her adorable dog, and brilliantly colored cars are parked at regular intervals along either side. The vertical supports of the rail platform emphasize the intense one-point perspective of the scene; as a result, the road and trolley tracks seem to very rapidly recede into the distance as the block-like buildings squeeze closer and closer from both directions. The underlying tension within this outwardly bright, modern cityscape is further underscored by the vibrant signage, which tantalizes the viewer’s curiosity but remains largely illegible behind various obstructions.
Ault once referred to New York as “the Inferno without the fire,” and the nuances of the present work illustrate that duality which captivated and inspired his many views of the city. (as quoted in George Ault, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1988, p. 7) As Roberta Smith has written of the artist, “Ault's firm, unflamboyant way with a brush, his feeling for a building's austere, carefully dovetailed planes and, above all, his love of light as painting’s form-giving, mood-setting force, sustained him at nearly every turn, in any direction he chose to move...He brought to his various scenes an idiosyncratic poetry and a sadness that was neither hidden nor indulged, but kept at an arm's length with a sense of dignity that, strangely enough, could almost be celebratory. In Ault's paintings, one feels that he loved life, even if life did not particularly love him." ("George Ault's Sad, Everyday Beauty in Stillness," The New York Times, April 29, 1988)

Muhammad Ali (Muhammad Ali) - Andy Warhol

Muhammad Ali (Muhammad Ali) - Andy Warhol
Coleção privada
Acrílica sobre canvas - 101x101 - 1977

Richard L. Weisman was a prolific, passionate collector—a man whose love for art endeared him to some of the twentieth century’s most influential creative figures. Known for his eclectic taste and signature joie de vivre, Weisman’s prescient eye allowed him to assemble a remarkable collection of masterworks united by a wide-ranging connoisseurship—a grouping that spanned Post-War and Contemporary art, Design, American Illustration, and more. “Richard bought paintings without reassurances or validations of any kind,” recalled friend Amy Fine Collins. “He was there in the beginning at Roy Lichtenstein and Clyfford Still’s exhibitions, not only with the foresight to buy but also with the instinct to select their best canvases.” For Weisman, art represented an opportunity to explore the vast scope of human creativity, free from all constraints. “I personally don’t like to limit the scope of my collecting,” he stated simply. “I just love the art.”
Art and collecting were, in many ways, in Richard Weisman’s blood. “When you are young, you may feel that what you do as a collector has nothing to do with your family,” Weisman told an interviewer, “but my family background must have had some impact on me.” The son of the notable collectors Frederick and Marcia Weisman, Richard Weisman grew up surrounded by art and artists. His parents—famously depicted in David Hockney’s American Collectors, now at the Art Institute of Chicago—were two of California’s most distinguished connoisseurs and supporters of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and other institutions. Marcia’s brother, Norton Simon, too was a prominent California collector whose collection now resides in his eponymous museum in Pasedena. Richard Weisman’s first acquisition of his own came around his college years, when he purchased a work by the Chilean painter Roberto Matta. Dealer Richard Feigen described how “Richard’s buoyant enthusiasm for art carried from Matta in 1962—to the Ferus Gallery, Irving Blum’s pioneering Los Angeles gallery—to Warhol and Lichtenstein—through to the 1980s.” “He came to art more naturally,” Feigen added, “than anyone I know of his generation.”
During the formative years of Los Angeles’s cultural development, Weisman became a frequent visitor to galleries and artist studios, building the many connections and friendships for which he would become known. “Richard was very much there and always the careful observer,” Irving Blum said of the early years of the Ferus Gallery. “He quickly focused on the emerging Pop style, particularly Warhol and Lichtenstein. He chose carefully and assembled a distinguished collection by moving forward astutely.” In Los Angeles and New York, Weisman steadily assembled not only an exceptional grouping of masterworks—anchored by artists such as Warhol, Rothko, de Kooning, Still, Motherwell, Picasso, and Lichtenstein—but also a remarkable coterie of friends. “Artists, athletes, entertainers of all kinds,” friend Peter Beard observed, “ended up investing with his friendship and guidance.” Weisman became especially renowned for parties and gatherings in which individuals of all stripes came together in a joyous atmosphere infused with creative energy. “Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Barnett Newman, Rauschenberg, Rosenquist, Clyfford Still, George Segal, John de Andrea, Arman, Basquiat, Keith Haring, Botero, even de Kooning,” Beard enthused. “We met them all at Richard’s.”
Among his many achievements in collecting, it is Richard Weisman’s close relationship with Andy Warhol for which he is best remembered. “Andy and I really got to be good friends in New York because of the social scene,” Weisman recalled, “and we also had the art world as a connection.” The collector described how the artist would often arrive at his apartment “with a whole bunch of paintings under his arm as presents.” When Weisman began to consider how to connect his seemingly disparate interest in sports and art—“I wanted to do something that would bring these two worlds together,” he said—the collector came to Warhol with a major commission. The Athletes Series, completed between 1977 and 1979, consisted of dozens of works depicting the major sports stars of the age—from Dorothy Hamill and Muhammed Ali to O.J. Simpson and Jack Nicklaus. “I chose the sports stars,” Weisman noted. “Andy didn’t really know the difference between a football and a golf ball.” The influential group of sports stars were justifiably intrigued by the enigmatic Warhol, and the feeling was mutual. “Athletes really do have fat in the right places,” the artist wrote in his diaries, “and they’re young in the right places.” Weisman, who would gift many of the Athlete Series canvases to institutions, looked back fondly at the entire process. “We had quite an adventure,” he said. “It was fun times.”
Richard Weisman’s collection would evolve well into the 21st century, as his curiosity brought him to areas such as American Illustration—an area of the art historical canon he appreciated for its unique narrative ability and aesthetic resonance. “He makes decisions based on a gut level—his first intuitive response or impression,” noted Los Angeles artist Laddie John Dill. “There is eclecticism at work on a very high level with the Rockwell and Warhol…. It’s an interesting mix. I really admire his approach to art. He is very much his own mind.” With Weisman’s passing in December 2018, the art world lost not only one of its most ardent patrons, but one of its most steadfast friends. Across a lifetime of collecting and connoisseurship, he created a legacy in art that continues to resonate. “Richard Weisman has had fun,” Peter Beard declared, “and much, much more.”
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, the hands can’t hit what the eyes can’t see.” This enduring articulation of Muhammad Ali’s unique and lyrical boxing style lingers to this day as the definitive characterization of his artistry in the ring. Widely considered to be the most influential sporting figures of the 20th century, Ali was not only a legendary athlete but a vocal champion of civil rights, an anti-war advocate and a charismatic celebrity. When Andy Warhol painted Ali’s portrait in 1977, the artist and the athlete were at the top of their game, both having become worldwide superstars.
In Muhammad Ali, Warhol captures the champion boxer in his most iconic stance. Fists raised, Ali confronts the viewer as he would an opponent in the ring, bathed in a golden—almost religious—aura. The tools of his trade, his clenched fists, are saturated in a rich, vermillion hue, while slanting red brushstrokes evoke the violence of the ring, like a bloody gash or wound. Above all, Ali’s unwavering stare and his larger-than-life, nearly four-foot portrayal drives home the fighter’s famous taunt—“I’m the greatest! I’m a bad man! And I’m pretty!”
As one of the portraits of “The Greatest” that Richard L. Weisman (who suggested the idea for the Athletes series) kept for his personal collection, the present canvas of Muhammad Ali is an important relic from a unique moment in history. When Warhol finished the series, Weisman presented Ali with one of the portraits as a gift. Taking a good long look, Ali declared, “This is by far the best painting I have ever had of myself.” Weisman acknowledged, “It’s a strong painting,” to which Ali replied, “I can also see a softness and a compassion. As a matter of fact, I can see many moods” (M. Ali, quoted in V. Bockris, Muhammad Ali: In Fighter’s Heaven, New York, 1998, p. 127).  
Three years earlier, Ali had defeated George Foreman in one of the most historic sporting events of all time, the ‘Rumble in the Jungle,’ which took place in a packed stadium of 60,000 fans in Kinshasa, Zaire. It is estimated that a further 1 billion fans watched the televised fight on TV sets around the world. At the time, Foreman was the undefeated world heavyweight champion, and Ali’s victory was a major upset. He won by knocking out Foreman in the eighth round. As the crowd went wild, TV personality David Frost cried out, “The great man has done it! This is the most joyous scene ever seen in the history of boxing!” (D. Frost, quoted in N. Mailer, The Fight, New York, 1975, p. 210). That match was followed by the equally historic 1975 battle between Ali and Joe Frazier known as the ‘Thrilla in Manilla.’ After a grueling fourteen rounds, Frazier’s trainer conceded defeat, and Ali won by TKO. He later said that was the closest he had ever come to dying in the ring.
By the time that Warhol met Muhammad Ali in at his training camp in Deer Lakes, Pennsylvania, in August of 1977, Ali was the reigning world heavyweight champion, having defended his title an astonishing nine times. The slender, bespectacled artist and the handsome fighter could not have been more different. Sharply-dressed in a black dress shirt and coordinating slacks, Ali was the epitome of cool, having just flown in from London on the Concorde. By contrast, Warhol was approaching fifty years old, looking gaunt in his pair of oversized glasses and rumpled seersucker suit. He was accompanied by a small entourage that included Weisman, Fred Hughes and the author Victor Bockris.
As Ali led the group around his compound, showing off his state-of-the-art gymnasium and training facility, Warhol gradually worked up the nerve to ask, “Could we, uh, do some, uh, pictures where you’re not, uh, talking?” That caused Ali to quiet, unnerving everyone in the group. Warhol would later recall, “I guess I really had told the Champ to shut up…I thought he was going to punch me.” Gradually Ali began to quietly chuckle to himself, loosening up and going through a series of poses. Putting up his fists, he asked Andy, “Do I look fearless?” To which Warhol replied, “Very fearless. That’s fantastic!” (A. Warhol & M. Ali, quoted in V. Bockris, Warhol: The Biography, New York, 2003, pp. 506-8)
Embracing the changing nature of fame as athletes and sports stars rose to take center stage in American popular culture, Richard L. Weisman recognized the growing commercialization of sports and the corresponding increase in influence of the sports stars themselves. “I’ve been really interested in both sports and art for some time,” Weisman said, “and it occurred to me that the two areas which are probably the most popular leisure-time activities around have never been connected at the upper level...Quite frankly, I believe that the athlete today is like the movie star of the past. These are the new movie stars” (R. Weisman, quoted in S. King-Nero and N. Printz, (eds.), The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Sculpture 1976-1978, vol. 05, New York, 2018, p. 291).
The Athletes series proved to be a timely one, because in the 1970s, massive developments in television sports broadcasting and product sponsorship allowed for a huge fan base to flourish and grow. National and international viewers could now support players and teams from the comfort of their own homes. Warhol was quick to recognize that sports heroes had replaced the religious figures of his childhood. These were the new idols that the population at large had come to worship. Like his early Coca-Cola bottles and Campbell’s Soup Cans, Warhol also came to see the pantheon of sports celebrities as American “commodities,” and he staged them as such. Furthermore, Ali’s status as a beloved sports icon also harmonized with Warhol’s idea of the American dream. Just as “a Coke was a Coke” any person regardless of race, gender, or social stature had the opportunity to rise to the upper echelons of
their sport.
“While some of the works were beautifully painted, by far the standout [of the Athletes series] is the portrait of Muhammad Ali. ‘It’s truly iconic,’” The New York Times reported in 2009 (C. Vogel and S. Moore, New York Times, September 12, 2009, p. A30). Many years before Jean-Michel Basquiat would include Ali in his pantheon of Black heroes, Warhol recognized the sports celebrity’s star power. This was no doubt due to Ali’s charisma and Warhol’s particularly shrewd and insightful skill as a portraitist. Muhammad Ali captures the essence of the larger-than-life personality, whilst also hinting at the real man beneath the fighter’s swagger. “They just seen a little boxing!” Ali told Bockris in the 1970s. “They ain’t seen the real Muhammad Ali!” (M. Ali, quoted in V. Bockris, op. cit. 1998, p. 13).

Nota do blog: Foi vendida em leilão por USD 10,036,000.

O 16 de Setembro (Le Seize Septembre) - René Magritte

O 16 de Setembro (Le Seize Septembre) - René Magritte
Coleção privada
OST - 162x130 - 1957

The great tree in Le seize septembre—a monumental ash, perhaps, or a mighty oak—has its roots in a manifesto of sorts that René Magritte authored some three decades earlier, for the December 1929 issue of La révolution surréaliste. The eighteen Les mots et les images (“Words and Images”) that he illustrated and captioned outline the basic, conceptual procedures he was employing in his pictures. Over the drawing of a low brick wall, he wrote: “An object hints at other objects behind it” (K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., René Magritte: Selected Writings. Minneapolis, 2010, p. 33).
Throughout his oeuvre, Magritte exploited the intriguing effect of enigma inherent in the act of concealment—that of simply placing one thing in front of another—as a virtually failsafe pictorial ploy, fostering an irresistible sense of mystery that provokes conjecture and expectation for the adult viewer no less than for a child at play. In Le seize septembre, a faint light glimmers through the leaves of a tree at night—might one infer the moon to be lurking behind this tree? Leaving no doubt, Magritte responds, as if in a shout: “Peek-a-boo—yes!”, revealing the crescent lunar horn. The game does not end here, however, in simple fun—metaphysical, mythological, and phenomenological dimensions will thenceforth preoccupy the spectator.
The notion of the “hidden visible” guided much of Magritte’s production during the mid-1950s, generating clusters of works whose imagery may vary—in ostensibly random, unrelated ways—from one picture to the next, but which in practice nonetheless share this fundamental conceptual impetus as the artist’s latent, guiding logic. The four versions of Le seize septembre, painted between 1956 and 1958, comprise one such thread of pictures. The present canvas, completed in 1957, is chronologically the third and by far the largest in size—filling the canvas from top to bottom, the immensity of the tree against the cosmic expanse of night sky, an infinity dotted with tiny stars, is the most dramatic in effect.
Vast forests once blanketed Europe from end to end. The immense, solitary tree in Le seize septembre represents an archetypal memory of the profound relationship that has always bound humankind to its arboreal environment—as an essential material resource, and consequently as the magical dwelling-places of spirits and gods, leading to the advent of sacred groves dedicated to animistic and polytheistic cult worship. Universally a symbol of fertility and growth, the “tree of life” also represents the compelling urge in the human mind to acquire an ever-widening knowledge of its own existence and the outer world, and to postulate dreams of eternal life. The “cosmic tree” of the Babylonians and the “world ash” of the Nordic peoples—rooted in the earth, its trunk immoveable, its branches rising to the firmament above—served as the axis of the world, moreover the pivot around which the heavens revolved, unifying the four directions, the four primal elements, all things here and beyond, seen and unseen.
“Pushing up from the earth toward the sun,” Magritte wrote in an undated statement, “a tree is an image of a certain happiness. To perceive this image, we must be still, like a tree. When we are in motion, it’s the tree that becomes the spectator. It is witness, equally, in the shape of a chair, a table, a door, in the more or less restless spectacle of our life. The tree, having become a coffin, disappears into the earth. And when it is transformed into flames, it vanishes into the air” (ibid., p. 234).
In contrast to the relative permanence of the giant, stalwart tree, the presence of the moon in Le seize septembre is emblematic of the fugitive, but periodic aspect also inherent in the natural order. In an Akkadian seal, circa 2350-2150 BCE, a crescent moon hovers at the side of the “world tree”. The moon is the source of the waters of life; in its ever-repeating, monthly cycle, the lunar orb passes through phases of emergence, maturation, and decay, to vanish and soon reappear yet again, thus mirroring the process of agrarian planting, cultivation, and harvest—giving rise, in the spiritual, mythological, and subsequently religious imagination, to the belief in a god sacrificed and resurrected.
As a signifier of nature generally, the stand-alone tree early lent itself to becoming an ideal object for concealment in Magritte’s paintings. In La belle captive, 1931, and La condition humaine, 1933 (Sylvester, nos. 342 and 351), Magritte interposed the painting of a tree (placed on an easel) between the viewer and the very motif in the background landscape, thus blocking the latter from view. Magritte explained a further complication in La condition humaine: “In front of a window seen from the inside of a room, I placed a picture representing exactly the section of the landscape hidden by the picture. The tree represented in the picture therefore concealed the tree behind it, outside the room. For the spectator, it was both inside the room in the picture and, at the same time, conceptually outside in the real landscape. This is how we see the world, we see it outside ourselves and yet the only representation we have of it is inside us” (quoted in cat. rais., D. Sylvester, vol. II, p. 184).
In February 1956 Magritte commenced a series of gouaches he designated La place au soleil (The Place in the Sun), in which he superimposed an image on an outwardly unrelated, larger object. The best-known of the two oil paintings that were created from these gouaches shows the figure of Botticelli’s La Primavera adorning the back of Magritte’s familiar man in a black coat and bowler hat (Le bouquet tout fait; Sylvester, no. 837). Concurrently, Magritte was also painting variations on one of his most iconic, signature themes, L’empire des lumières—a nocturnal townscape beneath a brightly daylit, blue sky.
The first version of Le seize septembre was completed during April-early May 1956 (D. Sylvester no. 834; Kunsthaus Zürich). The artist wrote to Mirabelle Dors and Maurice Rapin on 20 April: “I have continued with my Places in the Sun, but by now the title is no longer suitable for a big tree at night time with a crescent moon above it! With this, a better or at any rate, a different description of ‘The place in the sun’ is given us: what is seen on an object is another object hidden by the one which is interposed between us and the hidden object. In such a way that the object which is interposed [the tree]—is hidden by the object [the crescent moon]—which was hidden. That which is interposed between an object and us is hidden by the object which is no longer hidden?!?!?” (D. Sylvester, op. cit., vol. III, p. 254).
“I have just painted the moon on a tree in the blue-gray colors of evening,” Magritte wrote to Dors and Rapin on 6 August 1956, having completed the second version of Le seize septembre (Sylvester, no. 836; Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp). “[Louis] Scutenaire has come up with a very beautiful title: Le seize septembre. I think it fits, so from September 16th on, we’ll call it done” (quoted in H. Torczyner, op. cit., 1977, p. 260). If Magritte or Scutenaire had something planned for that day some five weeks hence, we do not know; the significance of the title—if any—remains a mystery.
As Corot was master of the silvery light of early dawn, Monet peerless in evoking the declining light and shadows of late afternoon, Magritte was surely the arch magician among modern painters, most subtly adroit at summoning forth and revealing to us the many shades of meaning in the darkness and mystery of the nocturnal sky, as here in our lives on earth. “I do not admit that the world is incoherent and absurd,” Magritte explained in a 1958 interview with Georges d’Amphoux. “What is absurd and incoherent is the belief that the so-called logic of reason can influence the logic of the World as it thinks fit. It seems to me that a picture is effective if it is neither absurd, nor incoherent, and if it has the logic of mystery, as the World does” (K. Rooney and E. Plattner, eds., op. cit., 2010, p. 234).
Of the nineteen canvases Magritte painted of similar or larger scale, fifteen are located in public institutions, including The Art Institute of Chicago; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam;  Najanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Miyazaki Digital Museum.
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O Sabbat (Le Sabbat) - René Magritte

O Sabbat (Le Sabbat) - René Magritte
Coleção privada
OST - 50x60 - 1959

Incorporating an image of a painting into the picture itself, as René Magritte did repeatedly from the late 1920s onward, was one of the most effective and infinitely renewable pictorial devices that the artist developed to challenge the viewer’s preconceived notions of reality and lay bare the mystery that he believed was inherent in the everyday world. Painted in February 1959, in Le Sabbat, Magritte welcomes the viewer into his unique and surreal world; using objects from reality yet altering their usual associations by displacing them: here, a painting sits on an easel, a landscape beyond it, and yet the two have little in common: the nocturnal landscape that spreads before us has, it is implied, been represented in the picture-within-a-picture by a still life, which in fact is upside down.
Magritte had first begun to explore the theme of a picture within a picture having been inspired in the 1920s by Giorgio de Chirico’s interior scenes, such as Great Metaphysical Interior, 1917 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), in which a range of disparate objects and framed paintings are depicted within strange interior spaces. This concept fascinated the artist and remained one of the most insistent themes of his painting, manifesting itself in the image of canvases propped on easels in the landscape or in front of windows such as La condition humaine, 1933 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). By incorporating an image of a painting into the picture itself, Magritte heightens the ambiguity between the real image, the painted representation of it and the viewer’s interpretation of it. With these paintings, Magritte disrupted the notion of painting “as a window on the world”, highlighting the artifice of painting itself.
Le Sabbat draws directly upon the shock of recognition and the epiphany that Magritte himself had experienced when he first came across the work of de Chirico. “This triumphant poetry” Magritte wrote of the revelation of seeing de Chirico’s metaphysical paintings for the first time, “supplanted the stereotyped effect of the traditional painting. It represented a complete break with the mental habits peculiar to artists who are prisoners of talent, virtuosity and all the little aesthetic specialties. It was a new vision through which the spectator might recognize his own isolation and hear the silence of the world” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 2009, p. 71). Following the revelation that Magritte experienced in seeing de Chirico’s work, he embarked on the creation of a completely new type of picture in which the structures of painting and representation were not only exposed as the artifices they were, but also, as here in this work, forms aimed at exposing the innate enchantment and deeper mysteries of reality and perception. In order to do this Magritte had to abandon the faux cubo-futurist style of painting he had hitherto been practicing and embraced a new, objective style of painting in which objects were rendered in a simple, dry, matter-of-fact, manner. In what he called a “detached way of representing objects [which] seems to me related to a universal style, in which idiosyncrasies and minor predilections of an individual no longer count” (Magritte, quoted in ibid., p. 110).
In the present work, Magritte evokes the mystery of representation in a different way, by showing a picture on an easel that is both possible and impossible—in its being upside-down—and wholly incongruous, because of its apparent lack of relationship with the scenery behind it. There is no room even for a game of disjointed association. There are no links. This is a realm of magic, and it is through this jarring magic that the viewer perceives all the more the mystery of painting. For it is the painting on the easel that is the main theme, the main motif, in Le Sabbat. “There is a familiar feeling of mystery experienced in relation to things that are customarily labelled ‘mysterious’”, Magritte explained in 1958, the year before he painted the present work, “but the supreme feeling is the unfamiliar feeling of mystery, experienced in relation to things that it is customary to ‘consider natural’…We must consider the idea that a ‘marvellous’ world manifests itself in the ‘usual’ world… Instead of being astonished by the superfluous existence of another world, it is our one world, where coincidences surprise us, that we must not lose sight of” (Magritte, 1958 in K. Rooney & E. Plattner, eds., René Magritte, Selected Writings, trans. J. Levy, Surrey, 2016, p. 281).
This theme had been explored two years earlier in a pair of works both titled Le réveille-matin (The Alarm Clock) (Sylvester, nos. 861 & 862). In these paintings, an upside-down still-life is shown upon an easel before a sprawling daytime landscape. By taking an artistic genre that is so completely wedded to reality—the still-life—Magritte heightens the effect of his visual disruption. The still-life is supposed to mirror the world; here, this concept is literally turned upside down. Not only does the painting depict a completely different image to the scene stretching out beyond, but it is also oriented incorrectly, making this strange scene all the more beguiling. Magritte described Le réveille-matin and the related Le Sabbat: “The theme in my view is as follows: a picture the wrong way round—whatever the subject thus represented—in something (a landscape for example) the right way round. It would be possible to do a version of the picture Le réveille-matin with a face (or a landscape) in it the wrong way round. But if I paint a picture resting on an easel and representing, for instance, an afternoon sky the right way round in front of a night sky, the theme is different, in spite of the presence of the picture and the easel” (Magritte, quoted in D. Sylvester, ed., René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, vol. III, 1993, p. 306).
Indeed, in Le Sabbat the moonlit night heightens this mystery, and, the fact that the picture within Le Sabbat is small, it emphasizes the landscape behind, ensuring that the viewer's attention is focused on the seemingly discordant relationship between what has been seen and what has been painted. The painting is only truly “revealed” by Magritte through its association, or lack thereof, to the landscape. And in this, the artist manages to illustrate the strangeness of perception itself. It is not the act of painting alone whose strange pitfalls and bizarre, even illogical, mechanics are exposed, but also the very act of seeing—“seeing” in the present painting involves looking at a landscape, but yet seeing a still life.
Adding an extra layer of the mysterious to Le Sabbat and heightening this sense that perception itself should not be taken for granted and should not be so rigid as it can often become, Magritte has not only inverted the still life image, but has also included within it a vase that appears to be made of stone, lending it a monumentality that itself adds to the visual drama of the gravity-defying ceiling-hugging still life. Despite this, there is nothing strictly impossible within Le Sabbat—yet an atmosphere of the unreal nevertheless pervades the work. As the artist once explained: “I must inform you however that words such as unreal, unreality, imaginary, seem unsuited to a discussion of my painting,” he explained. “I am not in the least curious about the 'imaginary,' nor about the 'unreal'. For me, it's not a matter of painting 'reality' as though it were readily accessible to me and to others, but of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and finally presents itself with its mystery. Understood in this way, that reality has nothing 'unreal' or 'imaginary' about it” (Magritte, quoted in H. Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. R. Miller, New York, 1977, p. 70).
Magritte's pictures, then, are revelations, little epiphanies that still reverberate with that initial moment of lucidity that the artist himself had felt when seeing de Chirico's Le chant d'amour in reproduction for the first time. That sudden awareness of the almost alchemical poetry that somehow exists in our world—just beyond the layer that our eyes see—is forcefully brought to our attention in the deliberately discordant lyricism of Le sabbat.
Magritte’s own words when plagued by critics or interviewers trying to shed light on the hidden meanings of his paintings, resolutely denounced such interpretations, stating, “There is nothing ‘behind’ this image. Behind the paint of the painting there is the canvas. Behind the canvas there is a wall, behind the wall there is… etc. Visible things always hide other visible things. But a visible image hides nothing” (quoted in D. Sylvester, Magritte, Brussels, 1992, p. 408).

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O Trem em Jeufosse, França (Le Train à Jeufosse) - Claude Monet

O Trem em Jeufosse, França (Le Train à Jeufosse) - Claude Monet
Jeufosse - França
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OST - 60x81 - 1884

In early September 1884, during his second year living and painting at Giverny, Monet took his studio-boat for a short trip upstream on the Seine to Jeufosse, a picturesque village on a gently curving bend in the river, nestled protectively at the base of a hillside and shielded from the bustling main channel of the waterway by heavily wooded islands. “There the landscape, shimmering in the iridescent light, was constantly changing,” Daniel Wildenstein has written. “It was Impressionism at its purest, registering instantaneously in a natural setting that was always new and endlessly absorbing” (Monet’s Years at Giverny, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978, p. 15). During the ensuing weeks, Monet returned repeatedly to this tranquil spot and completed a sequence of ten paintings, some looking upstream towards Jeufosse and others in the opposite direction, capturing the seasonal transformation of the deciduous foliage along the banks as late summer gave way to autumn (Wildenstein, nos. 909-917, including 912a).
Within this series, Le train à Jeufosse is exceptional for a sight not seen in Monet’s views of the Seine valley for a full decade, and thereafter never again—a railway train approaches the station in Jeufosse, filling the wooded landscape with plumes of smoke from the coal-fired locomotive. Industrial modernity’s most manifest symbol of progress, the railway had indelibly transformed France within the preceding half-century, facilitating widespread urbanization and an explosive growth in tourism. Here, in a potent contrast of new and old, Monet depicted the train nearing the historic church at Jeufosse as it traveled southwest from Le Havre toward Paris. The train runs parallel to the picture plane, bisecting the canvas along the horizon, while the timeless Seine, long the lifeblood of France, makes a dramatic arc that thrusts into the heart of the composition.
When Monet had settled at Giverny the previous spring, in April 1883, proximity to the Seine had been one of his top priorities, along with a peacefully rural environment and a suitably sized house for his large family. “I have painted the Seine all my life, at all hours of the day, and in every season,” he declared. “I have never been bored with it; to me it is always different” (quoted in ibid., p. 18). By summer 1883, he had built a boathouse on the Île aux Orties, at the confluence of the smaller Epte river with the Seine, and had begun to paint along the length of the latter waterway from Vernon to Port-Villez. “Drifting down the quiet river in his boat,” Andrew Forge has written, “he would watch with a hunter’s concentration for the precise moment when light shimmered on grass or on silver willow leaves or on the surface of the water. Suddenly or by degrees his motif would be revealed to him” (Monet at Giverny, London, 1975, n.p.).
In Le train à Jeufosse, Monet devoted nearly the entire foreground to the description of the gently rippling Seine, which he viewed either from the grassy bank or from his moored studio-boat. The reflections of the silvery foliage and the pink-tinged smoke transform the surface of the water into a tapestry of pastel hues, laid down with an immediacy of touch that bespeaks the artist’s abiding pleasure at working en plein air, in countryside that he found endlessly enchanting.
The first owner of Le train à Jeufosse was the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who received it as a gift from Monet in 1890. Mallarmé was a dedicated proponent of Impressionism, and his glowing reviews of Monet’s work during the 1870s solidified his friendship with the artist. “Claude Monet loves water, and it is his special gift to portray its mobility and transparency, be it sea or river, grey and monotonous, or colored by the sky,” Mallarmé wrote on the occasion of the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876. “I have never seen a boat poised more lightly on the water than in his pictures or a veil more mobile and light than his moving atmosphere” (quoted in The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, exh. cat., The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986, p. 32).
In 1889, Mallarmé asked Monet to provide an illustration for “La Gloire,” a prose-poem that conjures a train trip to Fontainebleau, for a planned volume entitled Le tiroir de laque. Monet delighted in the evocative language of the poem but ultimately withdrew from the project, daunted by the techniques of lithography. On 13 July 1890, Mallarmé, Morisot, and Eugène Manet visited Monet at Giverny for a leisurely Sunday celebration in advance of the national holiday. As a token of his enduring friendship, and contrite still about the illustration, Monet invited Mallarmé to select a painting from his studio. The poet chose Le train à Jeufosse and, according to Morisot, cradled it on his lap the whole trip home. “One does not disturb a man experiencing a joy such as the one the contemplation of your painting brings me, dear Monet,” Mallarmé wrote soon after. “My mental health benefits from being able to lose myself in this dazzling sight, at my leisure. I slept little the first night, looking at it” (quoted in K. Lochnan, op. cit., 2004, p. 167).
Le train à Jeufosse remained one of Mallarmé’s prized possessions and passed to his daughter Geneveive upon his death. “A landscape presented as if only glimpsed and yet deliciously precise,” the critic Gustave Geffroy would later write about the painting, “a meander in the river, an arabesque of water running through the countryside, that Mallarmé used to compare to the smile of the Mona Lisa” (quoted in R. Lloyd, op. cit., 1999, p. 122).

Ferrari FXX K 2015, Itália

Ferrari FXX K 2015, Itália
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Following in the footsteps of the popular Challenge Series, Ferrari and their Corse Clienti division realized that there was a market to produce and sell a limited production run of a track-only Ferrari supercar not intended for racing. These would be offered only to “friends of the house,” offering a unique experience to collaborate with the factory and develop the future generation of road cars. Over the course of the summer of 2005, prototypes of what would become the FXX were shown to clients whom Ferrari thought worthy by invitation only to gauge interest. Formally introduced to the public at the Bologna Motor Show that same year, only thirty-eight examples were built over the course of production. A Corse Clienti version of the 599 GTB, the 599XX, was also introduced in 2009, offering clients the same experience as the FXX, yet in a front-engined package.

The true successor to the FXX would not be announced until after a new Ferrari hypercar; once the hybrid-electric LaFerrari broke cover at the Geneva Auto Show in 2013, it was only natural that a track-only version for use in Corse Clienti events would follow. The FXX K was first unveiled at Ferrari’s Finali Mondiali held at Yas Marini Circuit in Abu Dhabi in 2014.

Power in both the FXX K’s electric and petrol-powered motors was raised to 1,035 bhp in total, meaning 187 bhp from the electric motor and 848 bhp from the 6.3-litre V-12, an 85 bhp jump in total. Naturally, the car’s aerodynamics were also seriously reviewed and optimised for use on the track, with the nose receiving a two-part splitter and vertical fins on either end. A twin-profile rear spoiler defines the rear end visually and helps to manage downforce, which is increased by as much as 50% over the LaFerrari. Boasting a much more menacing stance as a result, the FXX K is 194 mm longer and also 59 mm wider than its road-going sibling. Finally, the FXX K tips the scales at around 1,255 kg, some 90 kg lighter than the LaFerrari. It is able to lap Fiorano in just 1:14, five seconds faster than the LaFerrari.

Painted in traditional Rosso Corsa with silver highlights and wearing the race number 7, this FXX K is offered today from the collection of its first and only owner. Since its delivery, the car has not been driven in any Corse Clienti events. It is presented in ‘standard’ guise and can be upgraded to ‘Evo’ specifications by Corse Clienti in Maranello, should its next owner choose, or can be enjoyed as delivered in its current configuration. With less than 250 km on the odometer, this FXX K is presented today in virtually as-new condition throughout.

Ownership of an FXX K truly offers a unique and exciting side of Ferrari ownership and on-track driving. Owners work in close collaboration with Ferrari’s own engineers and professional test drivers to hone and improve their driving on some of the world’s most incredible racetracks in a non-competitive format. Ready to be driven in Corse Clienti events worldwide in 2020 and beyond, this is an incredible opportunity for an enthusiast to become part of the Ferrari family.

McLaren Senna GTR 2019, Inglaterra

McLaren Senna GTR 2019, Inglaterra
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When McLaren decides to anoint one of its models with the GTR moniker, it is not without serious consideration and forethought. Only three times in the past thirty years have products from Woking been considered worthy, and the original GTR, the 1995 McLaren F1 GTR, can claim an outright victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in its (long) list of accolades. At a time when hypercars are being unveiled with increasing frequency, each one promising unparalleled levels of performance, it is those with proven racing pedigree that deliver on the prelaunch promises and command the most respect. None come with more pedigree than a GTR version of a McLaren dedicated to the memory of Ayrton Senna, its most successful racing driver.

Whereas the McLaren Senna was conceived from the outset to be the most track-focused road car McLaren had ever built, the GTR version is intended to simply be the fastest track car McLaren has ever built, other than a fully-fledged Formula 1 car. Mike Flewitt, CEO of McLaren Automotive, summarised the ethos of the project, stating that by being ‘free from the constraints of road car legislation and motorsport competition rules, we have pushed the limits of what is technically possible to advance circuit driving capability to another level entirely’.

Somewhat conspicuously, the engine remains the same M840TR 4.0-litre turbocharged V-8 as found in the standard Senna, featuring dry sump lubrication, lightweight materials for the rods and pistons, and a pair of ultra-low inertia, twin scroll turbo chargers, equipped with electronic wastegates for instant throttle response. However, as the GTR was never intended to be made road-legal, the secondary catalysts are removed from the Inconel and titanium exhaust system, which helps free up more power, bringing the headline figures to a colossal 814 bhp and 590 foot-pounds of torque. It will therefore out-accelerate a standard Senna, meaning a 0–60 mph time of less than 2.8 seconds and a 0–124 mph time of less than 6.8 seconds.

Whereas the changes to the power train can rightly be considered as tweaks, the changes to the aerodynamics are far more comprehensive. Indeed, the GTR takes the already unparalleled levels of aero performance offered by the Senna to another level. At the front, the reprofiled front splitter has vortex generators on the outside edges to smooth airflow underneath the car, whilst at the rear, the gargantuan rear wing is now mounted on LMP1-style endplates, placed further back and higher in the airstream. Whereas the Senna could generate 800 kg of downforce at 155 mph, the GTR raises the bar to over 1,000 kg and can muster the same figures as the standard Senna at 15% lower speeds.

Remarkably, the refinements come with no cost to the drag coefficient, which remains the same as the road car. The carbon-fibre Monocell III-R tub also remains the same of that as the road-going variant, however front track is increased, and new ultra-lightweight forged alloy wheels wrapped in bespoke slick Pirelli P-Zero tyres take the place of the heavier road-going variants, themselves shod in rubber naturally compromised for street use. Since the car had no requirement to navigate speed humps or road imperfections, the suspension was fixed and also optimised for the track. The result of these changes is a marked improvement in mechanical grip to improve performance in slower-speed corners, where aerodynamic performance is less important.

Active aero elements also remain a feature at the front and rear, with nose winglets to guide air either underneath the body for downforce, or through the radiators and oil coolers when required. In addition, the aforementioned enormous rear wing is controlled by hydraulics and moves constantly to suit the driving scenario, either to act as an airbrake, increase downforce, or trim drag as part of an active ‘Drag Reduction System’ (DRS). With the wing acting purely as an airbrake, the car is capable of 3 g of decelerative force, a full 20% more than the Senna road car.

The race-optimised changes continue inside the cockpit as well, where a VBOX HD data logger, car-to-pit radio system, and FIA-approved six-point racing harnesses replace road car necessities such as the airbags and handbrake. Plexiglass replaces glasses, and even the signature transparent ‘sideblades’ from the road-going Senna are swapped for purely carbon-fibre panels, all in the name of saving weight. The result is that despite carrying extra racing essentials like its pneumatic jacking system, it actually weighs 11 kg less and tips the scales at 1,188 kg without fluids.

This particular example is offered for sale as a brand-new car with zero miles on the odometer. It is the ultimate version of McLaren’s current hypercar and may well be the most powerful and track-focused non-hybrid car that the factory ever builds. Being just one of 75 examples makes this a truly unique opportunity to acquire an incredibly special machine.

Lamborghini Countach LP400 S Series I 1979, Itália

Lamborghini Countach LP400 S Series I 1979, Itália
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Whereas recent Lamborghinis have been named after bulls or bullfighting, the word Countach has its origins as a phrase used by Piedmontese men to describe the moment of laying eyes on a beautiful woman. No wonder, then, that Lamborghini chose it for its groundbreaking supercar when it launched the Lamborghini Countach LP400 in 1974.
Few cars have caused such a stir in the automotive world, and the man responsible for the outrageous design was a then relatively inexperienced Marcello Gandini of Bertone. Unconstrained by trivial matters like user friendliness or ergonomics, Gandini let his imagination run wild for the Countach, and the result was one of the most striking cars of the 20th century. Impossibly low, wide, and angular, it was poles apart from anything that had come before, and it changed the design ethos for nearly every supercar that followed, especially those from Lamborghini. The mid-mounted V-12 engine, forward-located cabins, and scissor door arrangement of the Diablo, Murciélago, and Aventador can all trace their origins to Gandini’s Countach.
Perhaps the most significant innovation was the arrangement of the powertrain; where the Miura had already pioneered a mid-engined V-12 layout, the Countach engineering team, led by Paolo Stanzani, chose to take the concept one step further and installed the engine longitudinally. What’s more, they also managed to mid-mount the transmission by moving the output shaft to the front of the engine rather than the rear. Drive was then channelled via a propshaft that ran through the engine’s oil sump to a rear differential and through to the rear wheels. This format not only increased stability by keeping mass in the centre of the car, but also allowed the gear linkage to be shortened, thus improving its action, whilst also permitting far easier access to engine ancillaries for servicing and maintenance.
This 1979 Countach is a Series I LP400S, and it is noteworthy for its optional V-shaped rear wing and its engine upgrades. Lamborghini had experienced reliability issues with early Countach prototypes, and the original intention to launch the car with a 5.0-litre version of the V-12 was scrapped in favour of using the same 3.9-litre V-12 as used in the Miura. However, due to the packaging requirements of the engine bay, the downdraught Webers were changed for side-draft Weber 45 DCOE carburettors, and peak power output was slightly lower than that of a Miura SV as a result. This obviously mattered to Heinz Steber, a former owner of this particular car in the 1980s who also owned a Miura, as he chose to have the engine fettled by a specialist in Luxembourg to have the same downdraught 40 IDL Webers as used in the Miura. The car retains this unique configuration today.
It has spent the majority of its life in Germany and Switzerland before being purchased by its current owner in 2014, when it had just had a new clutch fitted and had its engine thoroughly overhauled by Lamborghini specialist Rene Ruch. Soon after the sale, the car was sent to KP Performance in Bahrain, where it was given a full respray in original colours. It has been lightly used since but always looked after, and it benefits most recently from having a comprehensive service, during which the fuel lines were replaced and carburettors tuned. It presents very well indeed, its paintwork blemish-free, and its original navy blue interior is a testament to a life of care and attention. Just 50 Series I LP400s were produced, and few are likely to be as tidy as this example, or have such an interesting history.

Nota do blog: Data e autoria das imagens não obtidas.