Never before offered at auction, and poised to set a new world auction record for the artist, the work offers a unique insight into the wandering icon as it offers a view of the figure both full face and hidden behind a column in an ambiguous landscape of either impossible or multiple realities.
The work, oil on canvas, signed "Magritte” in the upper right corner, will be visible in New York from November 4 to 11, 2018 first visit to Hong Kong from November 22 to 26, 2018, to Beijing from December 8 to 9, 2018, to Shanghai from December 12 to 13 2018, in Taipei from 15 to 16 January 2019 and in LA from 31 January to 6 February 2019. The painting will be exhibited in London ahead of the auction from 22 to 27 February 2019.
Le Location Common it was formerly owned by Gustave Nellens, the great collector who commissioned the “Le Domaine Enchanté” series of eight paintings by Magritte, and owned by many great works by the artist, as well as by the Fuji Museum in Tokyo. It is one of four paintings of the Man in the Bowler Hat from 1964 that marks the culmination of this theme in Magritte's work. The others are Le Fils de L'Homme, made for Harry Torczyner and which previously set the artist's world record when it was auctioned in 1999, La Grande Guerre and L'Homme au Chapeau Melon. The other three paintings showed a simpler image of a man in a bowler hat standing in front of a seascape and facing the viewer. In each of these works the man's face has been obscured by an object: an apple or a white dove. For the first time, Magritte uses a play of stripes with perspective and a forest in a technique that anticipates one of the greatest paintings of his last years – Le Blanc Seing of 1965, kept in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington – in which the image of a horse and rider ambiguously intertwines with the tree trunks of the surrounding forest.
Olivier Camu, Vice President, Impressionist and Modern Art, Christie's: “In subject matter, rarity and scale, Le Lieu Commun is the most important painting by René Magritte to be offered at auction since 1999, when the painting Le Fils de L'Homme, created for Harry Torczyner, the artist's great friend and patron, it was sold for a world record price. The everyman figure of the man in the bowler hat was used by Magritte as a pictorial cipher, moving between layers of reality. The present work is highly enigmatic and inventive. In Le Lieu Commun Magritte subverts the traditional genres of portrait and landscape painting and challenges our understanding of reality and representation; he plays with the viewer's sense of what is real and what can be perceived. We uniquely see this figure both in front of and behind the column in such a way that it is revealed and obscured at the same time. We are thrilled to offer this as the major work of our dedicated 18th edition of The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale. “
