Sirens 1979

Curator: This oil painting is titled "Sirens," brought to us by Paul Delvaux in 1979. Looking at it, I feel like I've stumbled into a lucid dream… Editor: Immediately, I'm struck by the scale of this thing. You can almost smell the turpentine, see the brushstrokes layering up those muted, moonlight hues. It's so clearly fabricated; Delvaux knew his material processes intimately. Curator: "Fabricated" is an interesting word here. It feels deeply personal, though, a sort of theatrical staging of his interior landscape, fraught with these enigmatic, somnambulistic women. There’s such vulnerability there, laid bare beneath the cold light of that surreal moon. Editor: Vulnerability maybe, but look at those crowns – more like commodities fashioned from fantasies. The industrial revolution birthed ready-made mythological longing, packaged desire. He renders them with such meticulous craft it feels…alienating, doesn’t it? Like viewing the assembly line of a dream factory. Curator: Maybe… Or maybe those crowns are delicate emblems of some inner realm, whispers of regality in a psyche yearning for myth. He mixes classical architecture with almost desolate scenery. Those fallen rocks add this eerie sense of destruction. I am drawn to that contradiction of inner and outer collapse. Editor: Exactly! He presents ruination like set design. What interests me more than mythical yearning, which always felt a little cloying with Delvaux, is how he manages his own materials. His consistent use of this almost theatrical composition makes me think how crucial was for him the surface treatment with oil paints to obtain the unreal atmosphere, almost cinematographic of his own "set stages". It's less about emotional authenticity and more about the precise, material manipulation of oil paints. Curator: Well, perhaps both can be true, can’t they? A constructed dream, impeccably executed in oil, reflecting a raw emotionality simmering beneath the surface. These ghostly beings evoke a sense of otherworldly longing, of standing just outside a realm you can almost grasp, almost name… Editor: Perhaps. In the end, it remains the material presence of oil paint on canvas: a tangible encounter with manufactured desires.