The Difficult Crossing

The Difficult Crossing (La traversée difficile) is the name given to two oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The original version was completed in 1926 during Magritte's early prolific years of surrealism and is currently held in in a private collection. A later version was completed in 1963 and is also held in a private collection. The 1926 version contains a number of curious elements, some of which are common to m... more

The Difficult Crossing (La traversée difficile) is the name given to two oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The original version was completed in 1926 during Magritte's early prolific years of surrealism and is currently held in in a private collection. A later version was completed in 1963 and is also held in a private collection. The 1926 version contains a number of curious elements, some of which are common to many of Magritte's works. The bilboquet or baluster (the object which looks like the bishop from a chess set) first appears in the painting The Lost Jockey (1926). In this and some other works -- for example The Secret Player (1927) and The Art of Conversation (1961) -- the bilboquet seems to play an inanimate role analogous to a tree or plant. In other instances, such as here with The Difficult Crossing, the bilboquet is given the anthropomorphic feature of a single eye. Another common feature of Magritte's works seen here is the ambiguity... less