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The Great Sirens The MET(8)

Week 4 Trouble is, now that you’ve done hands, feet, knees,

now you have to do chests and breasts. Id 768

Paul Delvaux 1897-1994 Belgian

The Great Sirens , 1947

Oil on Masonite

Measuring over six by nine feet, The Great Sirens is one of Delvaux’s largest paintings. The work features partially nude female figures in a moonlight architectural landscape, a mysterious setting that reveals the painter’s admiration of the work of Giorgio de Chirico ( see Ariadne on view nearby). Unabashedly unselfconscious in their states of undress, the women are formidable, even threatening, in their quiet seduction. In the distance, a group of beached mermaids mesmerizes a lone man in a bowler hat. Ambiguous in meaning, the painting evokes eduring themes of love and erotic fantasy.

From the placard: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gift of Julian J. Aberbach, 1979 (1979.356)

 

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www.metmuseum.org/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Delvaux

www.wikiart.org/en/paul-delvaux

www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/delvaux-sleeping-venus-t00134

www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/paul-delvaux

www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1979.356/

www.artnet.com/artists/paul-delvaux/

www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Delvaux

 

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Uploaded on February 18, 2016
Taken on November 8, 2014