Referring to a wealthy city in India, the name and the painting draws inspiration from the desire of wealth. Please note that www.ReneMagritte.org is a private website, unaffiliated with Rene Magritte or his representatives. Surrealism became popular around the turn of the last century and though it took a while to reach the mainstream in terms of interest, it was a very popular movement at the time. Golconda is a ruined city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, near Hyderabad, which from the mid-14th century until the end of the 17th was the capital of two successive kingdoms; the fame it acquired through being the center of the region's legendary diamond industry was such that its name remains, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a synonym for 'mine of wealth'."
As one of Magritte's most well-loved paintings, 'Golconde' (or, in English, 'Golconda') is a great example of this. against a backdrop of buildings and blue sky. It displays an array of identically-dressed white men in black suits with bowler hats raining from the sky in front of a suburban scene. However we will never truly understand Magritte's paintings even when gathering as much clues from his life as possible, as he eschewed giving away any explanation for his work. In this raw and graceful testimony of intersectional womanhood, a trans girl has to care for her Italian grandmother. Magritte got the name for this painting from his poet friend Louis Scutenaire, who often helped him find names for his paintings. The name adds a suggestion on the meaning behind the painting. The richness of the region, as it was the center of the diamond industry, has become so legendary that the name is now synonymous with “mine of wealth.” As a tribute to his friend Scutenaire, Magritte used his face for the man in the painting closest to the chimney on the right hand side. Golconda depicts a scene of nearly identical men dressed in dark overcoats and bowler hats, who seem to be drops of heavy rain (or to be floating like helium balloons, though there is no actual indication of motion), It was once the capital city in two large civilisations, and is now famous for its proximity to mines that have produced some of the most infamous diamonds in the world. Perhaps in fact the men are stationary in the sky, suspended where they are for whatever reason makes sense. His paintings began a triumphal March around the world, they exhibited not only in … As was often the case with Magritte's works, the title Golconda was found by his poet friend Louis Scutenaire.
Each of the men is different in their own way, despite the way they are dressed, and looking between them to study their features almost brings the others alive as you bring movement to the picture. Considering the huge changes going on in the world as the Victorian age ended and a run of long, painful wars began, it is not surprising that artists began looking for the bizarre in life to challenge people's perceptions. All Rights Reserved. Due to the connotations of wealth that the city held, the name now is listed in the dictionary to mean 'a mine of wealth'. This is another layer of maintaining the surrealist nature of his work; to explain it too much would remove the mystery, and when the mystery is a large part of what makes the art so appealing, that becomes troublesome. Complete Works In 1953, René Magritte completed one of his major masterpieces, Golconda. Here, it was an archetype I was all too familiar with—the male breadwinner, the suburban patriarch—made almost goofy. The regular set of the men gives the image depth and a pleasing pattern, and though the colours are muted they still feel rich and interesting next to one another. This use of normalcy against the bizarre makes the latter stand out more.