"(The tachistes) paint white on white, & they believe that this is an achievement," said RenŽ Magritte to Harry Torczyner. "I don't like that."
Torczyner responded by challenging Magritte to paint "a white rose, in a white room with a window looking on to a landscape covered with snow."
Magritte painted a rose in revolutionary red. "When there is a rose, & one is sensitive to it, one makes it as big as I did so that the rose appears to fill the room." He called the painting "The Tomb of the Wrestlers."
A comment by Jean-Paul Sartre on another painter's work sets the scene for the poems here. "Ses titres ne dŽsignent pas lÕobjet : ils lÕaccompagnent." "His titles do not indicate the object: they accompany it."