This is ‘Céline’s painting’ for the Magritte Museum visit, and her text:
Blood Will Tell
What do you see?
The Blood Will Tell painting which is in the Magritte Museum in Brussels is one of five representations of this scene.
In the background of the painting you see a valley with a river and some small trees. You can imagine the presence of a mountain. All the background of the painting is in the fog.
In the foreground you can see the trunk of a big tree. This tree is on the top of a hill and overhangs all the painting.
The trunk of the tree is a cylindrical cupboard with two doors. The top one contains a white ball or an egg. In the lower hollow we see a miniature house with light shining out through its windows.
What do you feel?
When I observe this painting I have the feeling that Magritte wants to represent the personality of a human. How could this tree be a representation of a human? As I said before, the windows of the house are shining and reveal the presence of intense activity. The intense activity is what a person shows to other people. The egg represents the descendant of a person and what a person wants to leave to this world. Finally, the choice of the tree is perfect for me. A tree is hard or looks hard like everybody wants to show to society. But a tree can fall easily with the swing of an axe. Exactly like a human. Moreover a human is many times far from other people, like the tree in Blood Will Tell.
Make a story
In a café, Magritte is sitting with a cup of coffee. In the bottom of his cup, he saw the reflexion of his own life and realized he was alone in this heart, like a tree on a hill. He knows a lot of different people, he had an active life with lots of parties and met many people but he had the feeling to be alone. The other tree, oh sorry, the other people just see his big house and his painting. He had no children, he never managed to mix his active life with a real family live. He had a wife but nothing came from the egg. Only painting, nothing real. When he went back to his working room, he painted this painting but the table was too small to represent all his life. He started again and again until he couldn’t continue. The pain of his life was too hard and he realized that if he wanted to represent his life, only the “blood will tell” the truth.
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