Lunar City 1944

Paul Delvaux made this odd painting called *Lunar City* at some point in his life and put oil to canvas to do it. Isn’t it strange? It is kind of theatrical, as if a spotlight has been shone onto the scene. I can imagine Delvaux thinking long and hard about Renaissance perspective and the way it flattens a painting, even though it is supposed to give the illusion of three dimensions. The skeleton and the women almost seem like stand-ins, in the way that they take the form of a human but are lacking something vital. The naked women are fleshy but without sensuality; the skeleton boney but without a story. The classical setting, empty of people, is heavy with the weight of history. And that odd curtain... Delvaux clearly looked at de Chirico and Magritte, but he also looked back to Poussin and the Italian Renaissance. He takes from them all to make something entirely his own.