| Wordsmith Words: Golconda |
(gol-KON-duh) 
noun
A source of great wealth.
Etymology
After Golconda, a ruined city in southern India, once known for its diamond mines in the nearby hills
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Dictionary:
Gol·con·da (gŏl-kŏn'də) |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Golconda |
For more information on Golconda, visit Britannica.com.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Golconda |
| Wikipedia: Golconda (painting) |
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| Artist | René Magritte |
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| Year | 1953 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 81 cm × 100 cm (31.9 in × 39.37 in) |
| Location | The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas |
Golconda (in French, Golconde) is an oil painting on canvas by Belgian surrealist René Magritte, painted in 1953. It is currently housed at the Menil collection in Houston, Texas.
The piece depicts a scene of nearly identical men who have a lot of differences dressed in dark overcoats and bowler hats, who seem to be floating like helium balloons (though there is no actual indication of motion), against a backdrop of buildings and blue sky. The men are spaced in a hexagonal grids facing the view point and receding back in grid layers.
Magritte himself lived in a similar suburban environment, and dressed in a similar fashion. The bowler hat was a common feature of much of his work, and appears in paintings like The Son of Man.
Charly Herscovici, who was bequeathed copyright on the artist's works, commented on Golconda:
| “ | Magritte was fascinated by the seductiveness of images. Ordinarily, you see a picture of something and you believe in it, you are seduced by it; you take its honesty for granted. But Magritte knew that representations of things can lie. These images of men aren't men, just pictures of them, so they don't have to follow any rules. This painting is fun, but it also makes us aware of the falsity of representation.[1] | ” |
As was often the case with Magritte's works, the title Golconda was found by his poet friend Louis Scutenaire. Golconda is a ruined city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India near Hyderabad, which from the midfourteenth century till the end of the seventeenth was the capital of two successive kingdoms; the fame it acquired through being the center of the region's legendary diamond industry was such that its name remains, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a synonym for 'mine of wealth'."
Magritte included a likeness of Scutenaire in the painting - his face is used for the large man by the chimney of the house on the right of the picture.
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 | Wordsmith Words. © 2009 Wordsmith.org. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Golconda (painting)". Read more |
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