French literary critic Gaston Bachelard gave his understanding of “happy space”. In his views, space is not a container or filler, but a dwelling place of human consciousness. I’m also impressed with the meaning of “house” in his mind.  Following this direction, the discovery could be called “topophilia”. His goal is to determine the human value of the space he processes. He studied a series of images which may be considered as things in the houses – “drawers, chests and wardrobes, what psychology lies behind their locks and keys!”(1964) With his pen, the daily trivial space in our life seems to carry endless poetry. At the same time, the highly abstract images and poetry are also constructed by means of peculiar space, written in the style of phenomenology of architecture and space. This work is a subtle interpretation of concrete or abstract spaces such as houses, corners, nets, shells and microcosm. For example,drawers, chests and wardrobes, it is a hidden, closed space, with unforgettable images of things inside. The past, present and future are also condensed there. For nest, shells and corners, the bird’s nest is a variation on the home, built from the inside, full of dreams and surprises, belief and happiness. The shelter of the shell is inseparable from its spiral shape. The corners with concentration are full of our forgotten and lonely memories. The microcosm is the abode of the great things that contain the properties. The microcosm is also a reversal of perspective, which can switch between big and small. From the tiny door of a miniature house, we find beauty within things. Bachelard gives examples of how poets create great images in a miniature world, such as the aster in apple, marriage in flowers, a miniature world in a glass bubble and so on. The image of space in Bachelard’s book explores dual meanings. The first meaning of “the image of space” refers to “images in space”, which includes the material images such as drawer, box and cabinet in the living spaces such as city, house and wooden house. It also contains natural physical images including nests and shells of the universe, spaces such as forests and solar systems as well as spatial forms in abstract spaces such as corners, microcosm and circles. However, he also talked more about the the images in space as the spatial images of human consciousness. For example, “house” expresses a kind of “protective” consciousness of human beings, while “corner” embodies a kind of “concealment” of spirit. The second implication, contain each other and form a group of spatial structures.

 

“What a spiral of human existence! We do not know immediately whether we are running toward the centre or away”. We can never know for sure what is inside and what is outside. We can only get closer and closer to existence without being sure that we are at its core. If Bachelard is trying to find the rest place of the soul in space, then Magritte is looking for the consciousness of primitive and fantasy, gender and death, absurdity and transcendence through his painting space. His painting is full of strong conflicts and divisions. He was the kind of true Baudelaire hero who introduced philosophy in solitude with philosophical speculation and tenacity. He likes to combine familiar things in a different way to achieve a completely different effect. He believed that “yes” and “no” were both important, and his paintings were intended to attack the predetermined thoughts and feelings of society. His works have a sense of timelessness and time solidification, and he likes to create a group of paintings with slightly different contents repeatedly at different times. With his clear, cold thinking, he belongs to the concrete surrealism characterised by concrete dreamlike images rather than the abstract surrealism of Miro. His commonly used techniques of expression are as follows: dealing with the structure of loneliness, mixing or changing things, changing the position and scale of objects and changing the texture to create conflict, accidental coincidence and contraction, dual visual images and concepts. These attributes of his works completely destroyed the separation of rationality and madness, seriousness and humour, fantasy and wakefulness and paraplegia in the traditional consciousness, thus changing the fact that artists could only find art prototype in the appearance world with poetic and mysterious unique ways.

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