The Two Friends 1946

Curator: Right now, we’re looking at Paul Delvaux's 1946 oil painting "The Two Friends." The figures depicted definitely resonate with Delvaux's distinct brand of Surrealism. Editor: My first thought? An unsettling dream. There's this stillness, a sort of staged intimacy, but it feels...staged. The composition is tight, figures pushed close, the muted colors adding to the uncanny mood. Curator: That unsettling feeling probably arises from Delvaux's combination of classical motifs with unsettling juxtapositions. Consider the figures: nudes set against this stark architectural backdrop and strange signage, creating a very strange symbolic space. Nudity, in the Western canon, usually denotes vulnerability or truth, but here it seems oddly ritualistic, almost theatrical. Editor: I agree. And the embrace itself feels posed, more about a representation of comfort than actual warmth. The way they both avert their gaze. You know, the space feels like a dream I had after visiting the Pergamon museum... sort of hyperreal but wrong. What kind of a friend wouldn't at least fake direct eye contact? Curator: Well, consider what such an embrace, this contact, this very direct frontal pose may have suggested in post-war Europe, in which Delvaux made his name: a need to find safety through another after so much destruction, but also an uncertainty, an anxiety. Those theater posters almost read like fractured promises. Editor: Right, the world is rubble outside of the safety of companionship...Still, there is also something so human about needing human connection for survival even if one can't maintain true authentic intimate eye contact. It all makes perfect sense to me, and if Delvaux managed to catch all that in paint, then well, that's that...a masterpiece! Curator: I'd agree. It’s a compelling, albeit complex and, as you said, dreamlike, reflection on intimacy in the wake of vast societal trauma, and how these basic emotional needs are processed culturally. Editor: Totally, a lot to think about! I can never see Surrealism as silly again.