Executed in 1953, La Main heureuse is a striking embodiment of Magritte’s notion of "elective affinities"—a primary theory behind much of his mature work—and the only oil painting by the artist to feature the piano and ring motif.
“The last problem I dealt with was that of the piano...the secret object destined to be united with the piano was an engagement ring."
The present work depicts a grand piano set upon a stage and encircled by an engagement ring, as if the instrument itself were the protagonist. Such a distinctive combination of objects is an important example of Magritte’s "elective affinities," a term borrowed from Goethe’s early nineteenth-century novel by the same name. On his discovery of the theory, which first materialized in his 1932 painting of a caged egg (see fig. 1), Magritte later wrote: “One night, I woke up in a room in which a cage with a bird sleeping in it had been placed. A magnificent error caused me to see an egg in the cage, instead of the vanished bird. I then grasped a new and astonishing poetic secret, for the shock which I experienced had been provoked precisely by the affinity of two objects—the cage and the egg—to each other, whereas previously this shock had been caused by my bringing together two objects that were unrelated” (René Magritte quoted in Marcel Paquet, Magritte, Cologne, 2006, p. 26).
With the advent of his new artistic approach, Magritte’s compositions began to shift from juxtapositions of incongruous objects toward those featuring contrasts of related objects. As Sarah Whitfield writes, ”Magritte’s earlier practice had been based on the poetic device practised by the Surrealists of provoking chance encounters between unrelated objects. The revelation that the encounter between two related objects could create an equally intense poetic shock led him to try and pinpoint the mysterious way in which objects relate to one another, to seek out what he called their ‘elective affinities’” (Exh. Cat., London, The Hayward Gallery, Magritte, 1992).
Having moved away from the illogic of high Surrealism and the seemingly nonsequitous imagery of the late 1920s and 1930s, Magritte began to operate within this new artistic framework, in which singular images posed pictorial challenges requiring resolution through recontextualization. The conceptual link, or elective affinity, between two or more tangentially related objects—like an egg and a cage, or a piano and a ring (as evidenced here)—provided a sort of visual equation by which Magritte could challenge the most familiar elements of daily life.
Fig. 2 René Magritte, La Main heureuse, 1952, gouache on paper
It was in 1952 that Magritte first solved “the problem” of the piano with a suite of three gouaches (including one held in the same collects ion as the present work; see fig. 2), each featuring the instrument encircled by a ring—the unseen liaison being the hand which animates both objects. A fourth gouache on the same motif was later commissioned in 1955.
Magritte’s correspondence from June 1952 illustrates both the importance and the genesis of titles in the artist’s work, with ideas for his compositions often suggested or "found" by his fellow compatriots and Surrealist artists writers like Marcel Mariën, Paul Nougé and Paul Colinet (see fig. 3).
Prior to deciding upon La Main heuruese, Magritte had considered titles including La Racine de miracles (The Root of Miracles); La Racine de révélations (The Root of Revelations); La Projections lumineuse (The Luminous Projection) and Les Grandes mouvements (Great Movements) before closing a letter to Mariën: “If you can think of something better, well and good” (ibid., pp. 146-47; see fig. 4). Just days later, Magritte announced the selection of La Main heureuse in a letter to Nougé, one informed by a book of aphorisms by the same title by author Marcel Havrenne.
The eventual title for the work, translating to The Happy Hand, underlines the connection between the initially incongruous elements. Upon further examination, Magritte’s composition divulges additional affiliations between his subjects; the reflection of the gold band against the dark grand piano distorts the view of the ring, altering the silhouette just enough to echo the form of a bass clef.
“The last problem I dealt with was that of the piano. The solution taught.mes that the secret object destined to be united with the piano was an engagement ring. The picture La Main heureuse therefore shows a black grand piano the end of which passes through the ring like a beam of happiness and more especially the happiness of the fingers of a hand which is playing the piano. At the same t.mes , since the ring is partly hidden by the piano running through it, its appearance suggests the shape of a musical sign, the bass clef.... It should be noted that the feature of this kind of image is that it doesn't suggest, as happens in some cases, the idea that one thing is like another thing: a woman is like a flower, like a pearl, like a cloud etc. but asserts that one thing is the other thing: A door is a hole. A tree is a leaf. A piano is a hand (or a finger). In this last case there is an additional pleasure caused by the thought that a hand is a finger, and by the ring which evokes that true luxury that Baudelaire somet.mes s makes us long for.”
In much the same way that literature influenced the titles of Magritte artwork, so too did music. From his earliest collages incorporating sheet music, to his later paintings also featuring instruments, Magritte’s work emphasizes the throughline of music in his work and the interdisciplinary nature of cultural influences in Surrealism.
The Music of the Surreal
Magritte’s recontextualized iconography continued to influence generations of contemporary artists who looked to the Surrealists, and more specifically, the work of Magritte for inspiration. Pop artists like Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha (see figs. 5 and 6)—who like Magritte began their careers in advertising—found ready inspiration in the compositions of Magritte and the related appropriation of commonplace imagery.
Fig. 5 Andy Warhol, Carat, 1961
© 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The only version of La Main heuruese executed oil, the present work has remained—alongside the related gouache (see lot 23)— in the same collects ion for decades. It comes to market for the first t.mes in more than thirty-five years.