Call 1944

Paul Delvaux made "Call" with oil on canvas, but the date's a mystery, leaving us to wonder about its place in his timeline. The painting's surface is smooth, almost dreamlike, the figures rendered with a precision that borders on hyperrealism. The color palette is muted, like a memory fading with time, except for the bold blue of the seated woman's skirt. That blue—it's the gravity in this composition, drawing your eye down and across to the woman in black in the background. She seems to move toward or away from the skeleton that is being summoned by the other figure. The way the light hits the woman in blue's shoulder, how Delvaux so carefully modelled the contours of her skin, reminds me of Balthus. Both had this way of freezing figures in time, rendering the everyday mysterious. Ultimately, what Delvaux offers us isn't a statement, but a question. What is the call, and to whom is it addressed?