Table of Contents Economic Policy Causes and Consequences of the Subprime Crisis Brendan Dowling 11

Slavery and the Modern Black Experience

Artistic and narrative representations can allow us to more wholly understand experiences than a fact-based or historical analysis. Philosopher Hayden White explains that creative representations are “a meta-code, a human universal on the basis of which transcultural messages about the nature of a shared reality can be transmitted.”¹⁹ As such, the connections between the plight of African Americans under enslavement and that of the 21^st century black community can be more universally understood through art than through a purely historical or analytical approach. This piece will look deeply at the work of visionaries such as Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon to try and piece apart how specifically we carry the legacies of slavery in today’s society, and how today’s black communities experiences with oppression are intrinsically tied with those of enslaved men and women 150 years ago. Much of the work can be boiled down to attempts to grapple with the complicated notions of fugitivity and violence within enslavement and modern black life. A look at how representations of these two concepts change over 150 years reveals the duality of both. Fugitivity is simultaneously a liberator and a limiter in the African American consciousness, and time has bestowed representations of violence with an increasing amount of cognitive dissonance and has deconstructed the power structures commonly associated with it.

The conceptual artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) manages to, through artistic representation, capture the oppression of slavery, its legacy in violence against, the misappropriation of, and the criminalization of the black body. Ligon first reached acclaim as an artist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the concepts of enslavement, resistance against it, and the legacy of the institution were important to his artistic formation.²⁰ In Bound to Appear, art historian Huey Copeland looks at Ligon’s art as an expression of fugitivity. Further, I think that the association of fugitivity and the black body—as expressed within Ligon’s art—is a connecting factor between the era of slavery and the modern black experience. A major theme in Ligon’s work—and thus a theme that he sees as being essential to the African American experience—is that of placelessness. Copeland writes that “The terrors of slavery—itself predicated on the theft and inconsequentiality of black life—have not only rendered the black body the ultimate signifier of negativity in modern thought and metaphysics but have also determined the realities of placelessness as black folks in America have encountered them from slavery though Jim Crow to the present.”²¹ This understanding—that American slavery was an institution so pervasive that it managed to strip generations of black women and men of value, bodily security, and a sense of belonging for 150 years after its cessation—is useful in understanding a social structure that Eduardo Bonilla-Silva described as being built upon “racism without racists.”

The legacy of slavery can thus be understood as the institutional racism in American society that criminalizes blackness and leaves an open door for violence against the African American community. Ligon has, in his work, attempted to identify institutional and cultural factors that contribute to this oppression. According to Copeland, “Over the course of his career, Ligon has consistently engaged the postures and visual technologies that produce blacks folks as runaways who define the limits of belonging and productively figure the aporias of representation.”²² This engagement is, in my opinion, most profound in his 1993 Runaways series. For this 10-piece series of lithographs, Ligon asked friends to write dispassionate descriptions of him (without telling them why), instructing them “to render him in words as if he had gotten loose from languages grip.”²³ He then printed these descriptions in a style similar runaway slave advertisements (see Figures 1 & 2 for comparison). These pieces are striking in how much they serve to depersonalize the artist, which speaks to the dehumanizing power of connecting blackness to fugitivity. Further, the use of a generic sketch on the advertisement that did not fit the description—as was common practice—has a commodifying effect on the African American in question and strips them of a great deal of their individuality. What these pieces reveal is the ease with which the connections between blackness and fugitivity, and even more so fugitivity and non-humanity, can be drawn.

Furthermore, the exploration of connecting fugitivity and criminality to blackness begins to speak to the mechanisms that have historically subjugated African Americans and how they may continue to do so. Copeland explains, “The runaway slave signified the onus of property to be recovered and the threat of the peculiar institution gone awry, its order undone and its objects restored to themselves, even if only momentarily, Consequently, the fugitive is a figure who muddies and disturbs fantasies of the idyllic antebellum South, leaving the confines of the plantation in order to inhabit a placeless horizon.”²⁴ Not only are fugitivity and placelessness both inherent to the African American experience, but also as Copeland unpacks here, we see that the placelessness is rooted in a fugitivity and criminality that has been intrinsic to blackness since the Fugitive Slave Law. I think that Copeland describes best the connection between placelessness and fugitivity in the black consciousness when he says, “Seen everywhere and wanted nowhere, it is as if the black subject cannot proceed to where he is going because his specter has always arrived before him.”²⁵ This notion of placelessness—that black Americans are unwanted in most sects of American life—can be found in much of Ligon’s art, I think most notably in his 1993 piece Picky (see Figure 3). The piece is consistent of a nondescript gray on black street map of Brooklyn, and a series of very brief stories underneath. The stories are monologues by an individual, presumably Ligon, telling stories of being rejected and otherwise discriminated against by white real estate agents and landlords. In each story the protagonist faces an isolation that is borne out of suspicion, in many ways the same loneliness and rejection that a black man would’ve faced in Brooklyn 150 years earlier.

The suspicion and rejection that Ligon expresses—rooted in the criminality of blackness—is reflected in 19^th century narrative and artistic representations of black life. This suspicion was a major contributor to feelings of placelessness among the black community in antebellum northern cities, especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. Of the experiences of these African Americans, Copeland writes, “Every dark figure might be searched for telltale signs of signs of fatigue, disorientation, or foreignness that might transform an unattended person back into a fungible asset.”²⁶ Copeland goes on to make reference to this sense of placelessness and fugitivity in the narrative of Henry “Box” Brown (see Figure 2). Brown’s story and the artistic representations that accompany it speak to the duality of fugitivity in the 19^th century black consciousness, simultaneously reflecting solitude and liberation.

Brown’s remarkable flight for freedom entailed shipping himself in a crate—three feet wide and two feet long—that he spent 32 consecutive hours cramped into. Brown then spent the next decades using his colorful tale toward an abolitionist aim, displaying “manic proliferation of autoexpressive media,” including a narrative, performances, a panorama, art and other visual imagery, and a hymn.²⁷ Some aspects of this work express notions of solitude and placelessness that one would find to be in line with Ligon’s work. In his narrative, after his heartbreaking separation from his family, he writes, “no one seemed at that time to sympathi[z]e with me, and I began to feel, indeed, that I really was alone in the world; and worse than all, I could console myself with no hope, not even the most distant, that I should ever see my beloved parents again.”²⁸ On the other hand, in the context of the 19^th century, Brown’s seizure of his own freedom and control over his own story were a cause of pride and celebration, and this is reflected in the artwork of the time. The illustration of Brown’s “resurrection” from his shipping crate found in William Still’s The Underground Rail Road (see Figure 4) shows him completing the ordeal with dignity and poise, without so much as a look of fatigue or wrinkled attire. Portraying Brown with such dignity bestows upon him the power associated with self-emancipation and fugitivity. Images such as this contributed to the narrative surrounding Brown that did a great deal to illuminate cracks in the formidable institution of slavery and to give hope and promise to the enslaved.

The highly symbolic nature of Brown’s escape from enslavement has lent itself to a well-developed body of art in recent times, but much of this conveys very different concepts and emotions than the 19^th century of which he is subject. For example, Pat Ward William’s 1987 installation 32 Hours in a Box…And Still Counting (Figure 5) trades dignity for cruelty and oppression in showing Brown’s experience in the box, and expresses the falseness of emancipation’s promises. Copeland writes that the piece “weaves Brown and his latter-day avatar into a seamless narrative in which fugitivity signifies only the promise of new forms of subjection.”²⁹ In a general sense, comparing 19^th century work and modern work that interacts with slavery shows the disappointment in Emancipation’s false promises. Copeland explains that black conceptual art that deals with slavery “marks out the disparity between instances of American emancipation so as to materialize the distance between the realities of black oppression and the myth of white freedom.”³⁰ So while both eras of work interact with similar concepts and forms of oppression, the benefit of historical hindsight has stripped modern artists of the hopefulness seen in much 19^th century work.

The duality of representations of Brown shows that, while fugitivity can preclude criminality, distrust, and placelessness, it also has offered power and liberation. Copeland writes, “Just as the runaway sought to move beyond his status as property, to duck the system of surveillance and representation meant to curtail, restrict, and ultimately cease his sojourn, his vivid absence remained a blight in the memory of his own and bastion of hope for those still enslaved.”³¹ Self-emancipation was reliant on the ability of the slave to subvert their enslavement in any way possible, and perhaps the connection between subversion and control over one’s one fate is still strong within the African American collective conscience. This interpretation of fugitivity as a symbol of hope and control can be see in some of the lithographs found in William Still’s 1872 The Underground Rail Road. One excellent example of this is the piece A Bold Stroke for Freedom (see Figure 6). This image depicts six Virginia slaves who, in their attempt to flee for Canada with their enslaver’s horses and carriage, were ambushed near the Maryland border. One of the men who attempted to recapture them threatened to shoot, but the fugitives showed unflinching courage; as Still writes, “Their adversaries [the slave catchers] seeing the weapons the weapons, and the unflinching determination on the part of the runaways to stand their ground, ‘spill blood, kill, or die,’ rather than be ‘taken,’ very prudently ‘sidled over to the other side of the road,’ leaving at least four of the victors to travel on their way.”³² To the white enslaver in the antebellum South, the power and control associated with gun violence was to be ubiquitously white, and facing armed fugitive slaves represented the greatest fear among them and the greatest perceived threat to their institution. I believe that this shows compellingly in the submissive reaction of the white men in the fear on their faces in the lithograph. Stories of this type of subversion of white power through fugitive violence would have been a tangible source of hope for many slaves.

Inherent to the notion of fugitivity, especially within an institution built upon systemic violence, is the need to grapple with interracial violence, especially violence in relation to liberation. Much of the depiction of fugitive violence in 19^th century artistic representations bestows African Americans with a tangible justification for the violence, as it is understood to perhaps be the only way to subvert the violence of slavery. The lithograph Desperate Conflict in a Barn (see Figure 7), which depicts a conflict between a group of runaway slaves and a group of white attackers in Virginia, addressed the morality of violence within the peculiar institution when slaves appropriate it in order to self-emancipate. In this picture the enslaved individuals are portrayed with bravery in defending there own freedom, and their employment of fatal violence is shown seen as being noble and justified. The steadfastness of the Wesley Harris, the leader of the group of slaves, is contrasted with the fear, rage, and bewilderment easily read on the faces of the white men. It is understood to the viewer that the violence committed by the slaves is not drawn from malevolence and does not lend them to suspicion and moral wrongness.

Conceptual artist Kara Walker (b. 1969) interacts with the two-way exchange of violence in enslavement, as well as with the continuing legacy of enslavement in American society. In his essay on Walker and her work, Philippe Vergne explains how her work reveals that, “The past is just simply refusing to pass, and the disarray we are facing is not easy to decipher. It is rooted in history; it is not a question of guilt or innocence, for everybody is implicated. It is not a matter of morality, and morality might actually muddy the water. There is not good and evil; it is not black and white.”³³ Her works primary purpose is to disrupt a popular notion of American slavery as a past event in which the victims and oppressors are clearly defined roles, with the victims serving purely as passive recipients and the oppressors serving as ubiquitously powerful actors.

This complicated picture is best expressed in a piece some consider to be one of her greatest, being the 1995 installation titled The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven (see Figure 8). This panoramic piece paints a picture of the cyclical and unending nature of grief and oppression within enslavement. This piece seeks to inject chaos into every understanding of the power structures of slavery its legacies in modern race relations. It creates gray areas in the perception of violence being passed down from white enslavers onto black slaves, between the commonly understood goodness of children and corruption of adults, between the sanctity of child birth and the foulness of defecation, and by doing so with a panoramic piece and with silhouetted imagery, tells many narratives within one image that all lack a defined begin, end, and central message. In this sense the primary role of Walker’s art in the collective understanding of slavery and the modern black experience is that of a disrupter.

Specifically in terms of the violence of slaves against enslavers, Walker’s work in many ways updates the 19^th representation of violence as a noble liberator to portray it as a more sinister, yet still understandable, type of vengeance. The violence that Walker depicts in The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven seems to be on one hand senseless, but in many of the instances, especially those of young black children committing the acts, the viewer does not feel scorn against the violent actor. Kevin Young explains that, “[Walker’s work has] given us back some sense of the revenge of those amputated selves—they have taken up arms, as it were, and provided if not a vengeance against, then revelations about Massa’s desire; and if not revelation, then at least a reveling in the polymorphous pleasure of it all.”³⁴ Walker tries to tackle all of the ways in with enslavement undermined the humanity of all of those involved with it, and seems to convey that violence was the only natural answer to an institution founded upon and rooted in violence.

Through artistic representations, the associations of fugitivity, placelessness, and criminality with blackness and the complicated moral structures surrounding interracial violence are identified as legacies of enslavement in modern America. Drawing comparisons between 19^th century representations and present-day representations show that, as racial oppression has moved from outward legal structures to a more nebulous social institutionalism, all of these notions have become fuzzier and less cut-and-dry. What is reaffirmed by this project is the importance of artistic and narrative based representations to the historical record, as art can convey complex ideas in a mode that transcends the passing of time and the transformation of society.

Work Cited
Brown, Henry. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself, 1851.
Copeland, Huey. Bound to Appear. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Still, William. The Underground Rail Road. Philadelphia, PA: Porter & Coates, 1872.
Vergne, Philippe, ed. Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center, 2007.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

(Figure 1) Glenn Ligon Runaways (A Loner) 1993 (from moma.org)

(Figure 2) Anonymous Runaway Advertisement 1838 (From civilwarquilts.com)

(Figure 3) Glenn Ligon, Picky, 1993 (from Copeland, Bound to Appear)

(Figure 4) Anonymous, Resurrection of Henry Box Brown 1872 (from Still, The Underground Rail Road)

(Figure 5) Pat Ward Williams, 32 Hours in a Box…And Still Counting 1987 (from Copeland, Bound to Appear)

(Figure 6) Anonymous, A Bold Stroke for Freedom 1872 (from Still, The Underground Rail Road

(Figure 7) Anonymous, Desperate Conflict in a Barn 1872 (from Still, The Underground Rail Road

(Figure 8) Kara Walker, The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, 1995, (from StudyBlue, Western Washington University)

Nature as “Powerful Other” and Foil to Mankind

in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Forrest Robinette
After reading no more than the title of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a reader could guess that the work is preoccupied with the subject of nature. The word “green” conjures images of growth and vegetation. And, in fact, the Middle English word “grene,” in addition to signifying the color, also literally means “to grow” (OED). The title does not mislead us because nature recurs as central force throughout the poem. But how is it depicted? In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the natural world is cast as a “powerful other”—that is, an entity that is both separate from man and capable of exercising control over him. The result is an antagonistic relationship between man and nature, in which man struggles futilely against the supreme efficacy of the natural world. This conflict is ultimately used as a means of exploring and exposing the flaws of humanity. In nature—the “powerful other”—man sees his weaknesses and shortcomings made manifest.

The Green Knight is a manifestation of nature, and, when he invades King Arthur’s court, his power and his otherness are immediately apparent. At the beginning of his long portrait, he is described as “an unknown rider, / One the greatest on ground in growth of his frame: / From broad neck to buttocks so bulky and thick” (Borroff 136-138). The word “unknown” communicates his strangeness in this setting, and the description of his immense size conveys the extent of his strength. It is the Green Knight’s power and otherness that enables him to expose the flaws of Arthur’s knights. When the Green Knight enters the feast, the narrator describes the thoughts and reactions of Arthur’s knights: “It seemed that no man might / His deadly dints withstand” (Borroff 201-202) and “For many sights had they seen, but such a one never” (Borroff 239). When the Green Knight asks to speak with the master of the castle, “charry of answer was many a champion bold” (241). The knights are petrified, and their cowardice is the result of the Green Knight’s mysteriousness and perceived strength. Courage is a professed value of the Arthurian knights, and, in this instance, no knight can summon it. The poet highlights this failure on the part of the knights by using the word “charry” (“fearful”) so closely to the word “bold.” This juxtaposition, between cowardice and courage, highlights the knights’ hypocrisy. Therefore, in this scene, the Green Knight, himself an embodiment of nature, exposes a flaw among the members of Arthur’s court through his otherness and his power.

The Green Knight, during his intrusion into Camelot, manages to expose another human flaw apart from cowardice. Through the contest he proposes, the Green Knight reveals the court’s aggressiveness and bloodlust. This flaw can be seen in Sir Gawain’s decision to decapitate the Knight. In her article, “Gawain’s First Failure: The Beheading Scene in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Victoria L. Weiss draws attention to the fact that the Green Knight never suggests to Gawain that he should attempt a killing blow as part of the contest. Therefore, Gawain’s decision to chop off the Green Knight’s head must be viewed as an active choice rather than Gawain’s only option. Weiss points out that “the Green Knight’s statement seems to indicate that Gawain will receive the same kind of blow as he delivers” (362). Therefore, Gawain’s decision to strike a killing blow is deeply foolish because doing so means he must receive a similar blow in return. Gawain’s quick arrival at his decision to behead the Knight is a result of the excessive aggressiveness that pervades Arthur’s court. For Weiss, this value on aggression can be traced to King Arthur himself who delights in games that, like jousting, “lay life for life” (Borroff 98). The Green Knight’s otherness and power make him a threat to Gawain and, as a result of the aggressive culture of the court, Gawain takes a course of action that dooms him to death. Therefore, the Knight has once again thrown into sharp relief the flaws of mankind, as embodied in Arthur’s court. He highlights those flaws by forcing the humans in the story to suffer the consequences of their own fallibility.

In addition to highlighting weaknesses that mankind can control, such as cowardice or aggression, nature also highlights those weaknesses that mankind cannot control. For example, nature illustrates the ephemerality of human life. During his search for the Green Chapel, Sir Gawain lives without shelter and is therefore forced to brave the natural elements. The danger of the elements is conveyed most vividly in a description of one of Gawain’s campsites where “from the crest the cold stream ran / And hung in hard icicles high overhead” (Borroff 731-732). The otherness of the icicles is established in terms of their physical distance from Gawain. Also, the process by which the icicles formed—surely a slow and steady process—is a temporal contrast to the rushed pace of Gawain’s journey in which he flies furiously from one locale to the next. The power of the icicles is conveyed by their sharpness and the physical threat they pose to Gawain’s life. The hard icicles emphasize man’s soft vulnerability. By being everything man is not, the icicles expose the precariousness of human life.

Although Sir Gawain is dominated by many negative depictions of nature, such as the hostile Green Knight or the icicles, the text includes several seemingly positive depictions as well. These positive natural environments appear at Hautdesert, the castle of Lord Bertilak, which Gawain stumbles upon during his quest. In a two-mile radius surrounding the castle are hunting grounds upon which Bertilak chases game of various kinds. In his essay, “Gawain’s Struggle with Ecology: Attitudes toward the Natural World in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Michael W. George claims that Lord Bertilak is a character that achieves a positive relationship with nature. He writes that Bertilak’s hunting grounds denote “not domination but, instead stewardship—the careful management of the environment” (37). George is right to deem Bertilak’s relationship with his hunting grounds a positive one; however, he is wrong to claim that the hunting grounds represent nature at all. The description of the grounds in the text emphasizes their tameness. It is called a “linden-wood” (1178). Lindens, with their heart-shaped leaves and soft wood, are idyllic trees. Also, the animals that roam these grounds are described repeatedly in terms of their suppleness and abundance. Lord Bertilak’s hunting grounds are analogous to the modern American lawn in which nature, deprived of its essence, exists only to serve human desires. His hunting grounds are, therefore, a site of destruction for nature.

From his hunting grounds, Bertilak wins three prizes in the form of a deer, a boar, and fox. The capture of each of these animals is followed by a scene in which the disembowelment of the animals is described in all-too-vivid detail. The narrator describes the carnage after the deer is caught:

They flayed the fair hide from the legs and trunk,

Then broke open the belly and laid bare the bowels,

Deftly detaching and drawing them forth,

And next at the neck they neatly parted

The weasand from the windpipe, and cast away the guts…

They breached the broad breast and broke it in twain,

And again at the gullet they begin with their knives. (Borroff 1332-1340)

The savagery of the description is immediately apparent. The excessive detail we receive regarding the sordid process can only be described as excessive. In his essay, “Aspects of Grotesque Realism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Robert Levine argues that the disemboweling of the animals is a means of highlighting human bloodlust. In this way, we see a connection to the aggressiveness that forced Gawain to undertake his quest in the first place. Levine writes, “the hunters perform a violently literal “uncrowning,” beheading the hind… and returning to the castle where Gawain waits for them, anticipating his own beheading” (68). Therefore, the savagery that one man dreads, Gawain, is being perpetrated by his host, Bertilak. Here, nature again forces man to face the consequences of his flaws—in this case, his thirst for blood.

Although nature figures prominently in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the poem reduces nature to a mere tool for human use. The Gawain-Poet’s decision to include nature so prominently in the poem is not the result of his/her desire to capture or explore the essence of nature. Instead, nature is brought in only as a tool to explore the Gawain-Poet’s more central concern: the flaws of mankind. As one critic, A. V. C. Schmidt, said, nature is only “an analogue for the moral and spiritual life of man: a mirror of man’s daily and hourly death in sin” (167). Therefore, the poem’s treatment of nature is ultimately inaccurate. The nature presented in the text is warped by the needs and concerns of the author. Yes, the depictions of nature in the text are undoubtedly rooted in reality; however, nature in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as a result of the poet’s goals, must ultimately be viewed as a constructed entity rather than a genuine one.

Works Cited

Anonymous. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Trans. Marie Borroff. New York: Norton,

1967. Print.

George, Michael W. “Gawain’s Struggle with Ecology: Attitudes toward the Natural World

in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Journal of Ecocriticism 2.2 (2010): 30-44. JSTOR. Web. 5 Dec. 2015

"green, adj. and n.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2015. Web. 11

December 2015.

Schmidt, A. V. C. “‘Latent Content’ and ‘The Testimony in the Text’: Symbolic Meaning

in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Review of English Studies 38 (1987): 145-168. Print.

Weiss, Victoria L. “Gawain’s First Failure: The Beheading Scene in “Sir Gawain and the

Green Knight.”” The Chaucer Review 10.4 (1976): 361-366. JSTOR. Web. 9 Dec. 2015

Despite painting images of remarkable photographic realism, Paul Delvaux’s tendencies to transmute figures, to introduce unlikely elements, and to negate social imperatives manifest images of radical intrigue. Paradigmatic to the work of Delvaux is dramatic ambiguity to the mise–en–scène. The storytelling of the painter is wanting in its reluctance to furnish a satisfactory conclusion. What we see in the work of the Belgian artist is a willingness for the imagination of the viewer to mediate the narrative, to establish meaning and resolution of the tension within the pictorial situation. Delvaux consistently deposits his scenes fathoms below a deep fog of mystery. The painter’s hyper–detailed photographic realism is plagued by unexpected juxtapositions which locate the normal in abnormal scenarios, which appropriate the familiar and redeploy it as the strange. At once eery and captivating, disturbing and simultaneously soothing, Delvaux’s paintings capture the world of dreams.

The characteristic magic omnipresent in Delvaux’s work derives from his childhood in Belgium. From a young age, he studied Greek and Latin and absorbed the poetry of Homer and ancient mythology.³⁵ The influences of mythology, divine figures, and Greco–Roman religious and architectural conventions permeate Delvaux’s work. Nude women, professorial men, diffuse lighting, classical architecture, and train stations populate the vocabulary of Delvaux’s work. Though certainly influenced by his compatriot René Magritte, Delvaux never became an orthodox member of the Surrealist group (though he was respected by its leader, André Breton³⁶) and certainly did not engage with the shocking and outright absurd juxtapositions of Magritte. Delvaux leaned more towards the anticipatory excitement present in Giorgio de Chirico’s work. Whereas Magritte’s work are often immediately unreal, de Chirico and Delvaux’s works share an affinity for delaying their shock in the viewer; their work requires exploration. de Chirico's The Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914) only takes grasp of the imagination once the viewer recognizes the impending threat of the sinister shadow as it seemingly approaches the innocent girl playing in the street. Delvaux’s work operates in a similar manner. Further, unlike Magritte’s works, those of Delvaux are routinely imaginative rather than imaginary. In this way, Delvaux finds himself located not in Surrealism per se, but rather in the exclusive category of magic realism, a quiet term in the field of art history, but a category nonetheless and one perhaps first coined by H.H. Arnason in his History of Modern Art. He writes:³⁷

In general, the magic realists, deriving directly from de Chirico, create mystery and the marvelous through juxtapositions that are disturbing even when it is difficult to see why. The magic realists, even though they may not indulge in Freudian dream images, are interested in translating everyday experience into strangeness.

In L’Appel de la nuit [The Call of the Night] (1938), we see four nude women situated horizontally across the frame at progressively longer distances from the viewer. They are located in a desert plane, the brown earth cracking and fracturing in the oppressively dry, barren environment. The oil on canvas painting strikes the viewer with its impressive clarity and obsessive detail, and the muted earth tones connote the dry haze of the desert scene. In the background rises a chain of gloomy mountains that serve as a claustrophobic wall, further contributing to the oppressive gravity of the scene. In the back right of the landscape stand several Stone Henge–like monuments — relics of a previous society. Erected as beacons in the desert are two apparently deceased trees, both utterly devoid of foliage. Rather than leaves, the righthand tree sprouts candles, all aflame. The lefthand tree’s branches are apparently snapped. However, the absence of limbs on the ground below suggest that perhaps this tree has already had its limb–candles burned down in a slow blaze. Whatever bizarre phenomena has transpired here is not a new incident — there is a recognition of time and its passing. Littered about the desert is a complete skeleton and, closer to us, a skull missing the rest of its body. What has happened to the bones? Just like the limbs of the tree, we here recognize a disturbing lack in the scene — who or what has removed the detritus and with what motive?

Against the right side of the frame is a portion of a sturdy stone sanctuary, a Greco–Roman harbor for these women in this oppressive habitat. The women’s proximity to it expresses an affinity to the structure, but the juxtaposition of its dark colors with the women’s white, supple flesh connotes some unresolvable disconnect between the women and their refuge. Draped over the face and breasts of the far–right woman is a white sheet that flows down her back. Leaving her abdomen, pubic area, and legs exposed, this sheet cannot be said to be serving as the robe of a chaste priestess, but it certainly bestows upon her some authority and quasi–religious significance in the scene. Rather than standing completely exposed, she hides her beauty (though notably the outlines of her eyes, nose, and mouth are still discernible, as if carved of marble). She holds fast to a lit lamp, the flame contained within a long glass flute. She wields dominance over the flame — the flame with its erotic hallucinations, its poetic associations with unrestrained lust. A theme for Surrealist activity was desire. “Its male practitioners believed that women were closer to the irrationality of dreams and the latent portent of their significance within the unconscious. They also believed that women held the key to understanding male desire within that unconscious.”⁴⁰ Operating under that understanding, the veiled woman here controls the very enigma men sought to grasp — desire. And so this woman exists both as a sentinel and as a beacon of this sanctuary of modesty and restraint. Even without the white sheet, however, there is nothing sensual about these women. Their poses are mannered and they exhibit neutral expressions: “impassive and innocent look[s] that [convey] no sensuality. We are unable to contemplate [their] status, [their] look completely devoid of anecdote or emotion, resembling that of a mannequin.”⁴¹ These women are depicted as in Renaissance paintings: matronly, regal, distant, and solely tranquil. Their ambivalence shares a sense of contentedness: they look neither desperate nor do they appear overwhelmingly pleased in their separation from a male dominated society (a leitmotif of Delvaux’s other work) — a society that may have existed here before whatever happened (though the skeletons might suggest war, famine, or disease).

Rather than locks of hair, the three women on the left parade dense ivy flowing from their heads. And yet, this ivy is clearly sprouting from the desolate ground, not from the follicles of the full–bodied women. Such a phenomenon is seen elsewhere in Delvaux’s work, including The Man in the Street (1940), while similar transmutation occurs in The Break of Day (1937). Dissimilar to The Man in the Street, however, is the women’s location here in a desert scene. This plain of death is starkly juxtaposed with the women who literally overflow with life — their hair metamorphosed into bolts of dense ivy.

The painting exhibits a sense of unnatural stillness and emptiness — a hallmark of much magic realist art.⁴² The image is populated by four women, but only the middle–right woman seems to have any kinesis. Even though she is apparently walking forward, ivy has somehow had time to grow up to her head, suggesting that she has been frozen in her gait for some time. The image subverts rational logic in favor of exploration of the deeper logic of the unconscious. The image is serenaded by the pervasive forces of earth and of life and death, but seems to be lacking the very hallmark of earthly living: dynamism. Like the world of dreams, time here seems suspended in this illusion of timelessness. In the world of Delvaux, time frays and a needle moves through it. The needle is the will of the viewer’s subconscious. Is this an image of death and brutal survival, or do the full–bodied women with their ivy hair, wide hips, and pronounced wombs suggest a scene of birth and renewal? The overflow of life that spills up towards the women compounded by the full female figures suggests the latter. This tension between the ambivalent sexuality of the women and their capacity to bring life into this world accentuate the dilemma of Man’s primordial urges or the patriarchal mentality vis–à–vis the growing modern consciousness of women’s reproductive rights of Delvaux’s own time.

Delvaux “insisted that his work had no hidden meaning and that he was only interested in creating mysterious, poetic images.”⁴³ Perhaps the artist did not intend a sole meaning within his images, but certainly his works invite deep thought. His paintings reverberate throughout the cavernous space of our unconscious and animate some unmistakable yearning to navigate the magical mystery of the images and to arrive safely on the other side.