Artist: Belgian illustrator Brecht Vandenbroucke
Publisher: Laurence King

I had at least two jigsaw puzzle boxes gathering dust at home, still unopened. I then came across a review of a fascinating but daunting puzzle featuring salmon leaping among some stars. The reviewer only took 2.5 hours to complete it despite its mind-boggling complexity. Then, I thought, hey, I’m good at puzzles – if they could do that so quickly, I could probably pick a puzzle and finish it in the same amount of time.

I got out this set from storage and dusted it off. The box was still wrapped in plastic. It was from the BookDepository, purchased around 2019/2020. Incredibly enough, the local post office only “found” it 1 year later, when I had long forgotten all about it and written it off as lost.

I had wanted to start on it for a long time, but always felt like I didn’t have the energy to embark on a puzzle marathon. I learnt from experience that pieces inevitably go missing when the puzzles get dragged out over too many days. From past experiences, I fell into the “don’t eat, don’t sleep” camp whenever any personal projects were involved, including puzzle assembly. It had seemed prudent at the time to first make sure I was in the right headspace before starting any puzzles, especially anything where the number of pieces ran into four digit territory.

On Friday, I decided that it was the right time to start it. I thought about it all day and came home right after work, determined to finish this in 2.5 hours.

It did not take 2.5 hours.

The Progress:

^ At the half-hour mark. I was still feeling confident. Starting with the edges first? Ain’t nobody got time to sort through the box just to find edge pieces, it’ll be faster to just map the pieces as I pick them out (or so I thought). This was going to be fun!

^ At 1 h 11 mins, my initial confidence and resolve to finish before bedtime were starting to waver. My back was starting to hurt, and my brain could no longer differentiate between different shades of green and blue. This wasn’t as easy peasy lemon squeezy as I thought.

^ 2 hour mark. This isn’t even 40%. How on earth did that person finish their significantly more complex puzzle (their leaping salmon puzzle was almost entirely in varying shades of dark blue) in 2.5 hours!? I picked up the box again to look at it. Oh, it wasn’t 500-pcs like I had thought. It was 1000-pcs, which I had hitherto failed to notice despite the size 48 font. Oops. Time to recalibrate my expectations for bedtime, I guess.

By the time I hit the 5 hour mark, it was already 11pm, and I had work the next day. I had grossly overestimated my rate of progress. As if I needed another sign that I was staying up too late, my crepuscular housemates had already started their night patrol duties. Hop-ficer Bunbun and Blackie kept hopping around outside the barrier gate I put up at the study room door to look inside and stare at me. Time to pause the stopwatch and continue another day.

^ I finished three days later, clocking in at 7 h 55 minutes (only realised 1 piece was missing here after taking the picture), more than 3 times longer than my initial estimate.

^ This is the finished puzzle. I glued it down to a manila card after it was done. Whether I can find a frame big enough to accommodate it remains to be seen.

Thoughts on the Picture

The reason I was so interested in this set was because I took a course on Art History in uni in 2011. It was one of my favourite classes. It was so interesting to learn about all the different art movements and how they flowed chronologically. It also inspired me to learn more about culturally significant artists and paintings by doing independent research on them, including borrowing books from the library.

So, when I saw this on the website’s puzzle catalogue, I had to have it. I mean, there’s a lobster holding a smartphone and being walked on a leash by a disembodied hand (a modern twist on Dali’s Lobster Telephone). I’m so down for this.

I like how there’s so much going on, and so much to take in and think about. I recognised:

• Marcel Duchamp’s urinal which I distinctly remember was from the Dadaist movement, though I had to google Dadaism to remember what it was even about
• Both the apple on the piano and the invisible man – plays on Rene Margritte’s work
• Frida Kahlo as a deer (TIL from googling that Frida had a pet deer and once painted herself as a wounded deer)
• Sigmund Freud waltzing with a skeleton
• Rene Margritte’s This Is Not A Pipe, top left (I can still hear my tutor’s voice when he explained it at the time. He had asked rhetorically, “what do you mean it’s not a pipe?”)
• The building on the top right – based on Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (Giorgio de Chirico)
• Salvador Dali’s melting clocks – the Persistence of Memory. And that mustache.
• The abstract-looking art on the green board is reminiscent of Joan Miro’s work

I didn’t know much about the rest of the image, though the box came with some helpful annotations on the inside. I didn’t understand why the chainsaw-wielding man at the top left was so antagonistic toward the dream-bull, but the explanation on the box gave some interesting context: “Ernest Hemingway’s brutal, frank realism was the antithesis of Surrealism’s exploration of the subconscious”.

I liked these bits in particular:

This cello one because it seems so artistic and somewhat romantic to me. I look at it and think, this must be what it means when two people are completely in tune with each other.

Every time I see this, it reminds me of the quote about not setting oneself on fire to keep others warm. It’s probably not what the artist meant to convey here, but I think it’s a good reminder nevertheless.

I still don’t understand the annotation for this bit, but it’s intriguing.

This illustration is so layered and multifaceted, it’s more than just a puzzle to me. It’s also a refresher course and brief lesson in surrealism rolled into one, because I learnt a few things about the people and objects here from the nuggets of information provided on the box.

The completed picture makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. It’s such a delight to look at! Maybe because it looks like one big party where just about everyone is having fun (except Hemingway) and doing their own thing; making music, dancing, reading books, writing, taking pictures… everyone looks so chill here, not discounting the possibility that real life may not have been that carefree or easy for them. My point is that, maybe happiness is really in the little things, and in being authentically and unapologetically yourselves.