DD28 – The seventh veil

A better title for this engraving might be ‘Restrained Drifts’ because it actually reveals what Delhez thinks about psychoanalysis. He took his inspiration from the film The Seventh Veil, a 1945 British melodrama directed by Compton Bennett and starring James Mason and Ann Todd. However, it is not an illustration of the film itself. The whole engraving represents a huge film set and everything revolves around the naked woman lying on the bed with a book in her hand in what we would not exactly call a modest attitude. Behind her is ‘Mr. Psychiatrist’, who is bent over a desk in a pose that invites reflection. On the first plan on the left we see the director and next to him the presumed author who is somewhat reminiscent of Freud, although Delhez himself claims that this was unconscious. We see checkpoints around the core event and the cameramen. The one who is below right has a large ear which indicates control over image and sound. Above the whole we also see a kind of human who uses four hands to move seven veils over this busy scene.

This work was made in Chacras de Coria (Argentina) between the 24th of December 1948 and the 22nd of May 1949. This work comes in a passe-partout with a (removable) protective film over the engraving and also has a brief introduction of the work in English, (glued at the bottom of the passe-partout, but invisible when framed.)