Golconda 1953

René Magritte’s painting, Golconda, presents us with a sky filled with men in dark overcoats and bowler hats. These figures, all nearly identical, occupy the space between the sky and a building below. The bowler hat, once a symbol of the bourgeoisie, loses its individual meaning here. Like the recurring motifs in dreams, the bowler-hatted man transcends his time. He reminds me of ancient depictions of crowds or masses, where individual identity is subsumed into a larger whole. Think of the terracotta armies, or even religious processions, where repetition conveys a sense of collective identity. There is something deeply unsettling about seeing these figures suspended, floating in the air. Are they falling, or rising? This ambiguity touches upon our subconscious fears and desires, reflecting our collective anxiety about the place of the individual in the modern world. It speaks to a kind of detachment, a floating free-fall detached from the present that perhaps has been, and will be, forever experienced and reenacted.