A PHILOSOPHER, A MATHEMATICIAN AND SOME SAY A SURREALIST
After Japan, Magritte (1898-1967) came as a bit of a shock. A big retrospective of his works at the Beaubourg. There were no queues when I arrived, the crowds were inside.
The Exhibition is called « La Trahison des Images » Although it has been translated as « The Treachery of Images », I don’t really go along with that at all. What Magritte said about his work is, I feel, far more appropriate.
« I am often asked what my painting conceals. Nothing. I paint visible images which evoke something that is incomprehensible. (…) But obviously I cannot prevent people interpreting my canvases. If they prefer walking through walls rather than using the door, what can you expect me to do? »His work is characterized by a series of motifs, that he endlessly arranges and re-arranges. His work is so recognizable that he is one of the rare artists that is not stolen - and if so, as was the case not so long ago, the painting could not be sold and was returned to the museum three years later. His Mother committed suicide when he was a very young and and he saw the scarf twirl around her neck as she fell. This would have had a profound effect on his work. They say he is a philosopher and think that this was perhaps what Beaubourg was trying to set out and explore what he was all about through some 100 paintings, probably more, alongside documents and drawing. I listened to some of the group lecturers giving their theory on his work to the spectators. It certainly didn’t work for me.
I think that I understood very early what « Ceci n’est pas une pipe » was all about. Just a picture of a pipe, no more than that. Who could even try to smoke the pipe in his paintings? English or French?
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His work was rigorously constructed even as going as far as a mathematical formulae. If I went along with this reasoning as I have for many years, his objects within the paintings seemed to join up! He was, so we were told, a surrealist and yet that movement is not one I run off to see. If a surrealist, he was a « reasoning Surrealist » which probably didn’t help his relationship with the real Surrealists when he lived in Paris.
Much of the work I saw, I knew. So I opted to photograph what I knew less or not at all. The set out is probably as bitty as I found the exhibition itself - although I won't be trying a philosophical approach. I would be beyond that.
I'll try and give a few of my very simple thoughts for the paintings I show you.
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All those pipes coming out of the face, head, eye of the Cripple. For me it adds up to what the cripple is...done in 1948
"Variante de la tristesse" - the egg has been hatched and yet a boiled egg only takes 3 minutres to cook and a little longer to eat...how sad...
The Clairvoyance done in 1936 (Extra Lucid)
The Surrealist artists prided themselves on their clairvoyance...but isn't it predictable that the bird will lay an egg?
Eloge de la dialectique, 1937
Magritte said "For the house, I showed, through an open window in the facade of a house, a room containing a house"...It all adds up!
La Colère des dieux, 1960
A jockey thrashing a horse and the rich spectators off to the races...the gods are probably very angry....
La Folie Almayer, 1951
I just feel that something is breaking up in the tower of a castle...
La Durée poignardée, 1938
(Time Tansfixed)
Both the fireplace and the locomotive give off fire. Or smoke...both need someone to "build that fire..."
La Modèle Rouge, 1935
Magritte says, "The problem of shoes demonstrate how the most barbric things pass as acceptable through the force of habit..." I wonder if my Brother felt that with his shoe shop...?
Les Merveilles de la Nature, 1953
Of course sailors on the sea can dream of love....
La Réponse imprévue, 1933
Isn't that a shadow of someone going through the door at night?
Le Dormeur téméraire, 1928
(The foolhardy sleeper?)
His dreams seem to be very varied, are they not?
L'Alphabet de révélations, 1929
I don't quite understand in my terms what the abstract is on the left or is it just referring to an abstract alphabet?
Une simple histoire d'amour, 1958
My thoughts on this one touch an erotic side...
Le Bain de cristal, 1946
A cristal glass which is so fragile and beautiful can hold "very tall" quantities...
La Main heureuse, 1953.
I wonder if this was the ring given to his girl friend?
Les Vacances de Hegel, 1958
Well both the glass and the umbrella receive water, don't they?
La Lecture défendue. L'Usage de la parole, 1936
The word is not clear and the stair -case goes no-where and yet the finger is pointing upward and onward
l'Art de la conversation, 1950
See the words in the clouds that the swans are looking at?
La Voix de l'absolu, 1955
For me, that is romantisicm
Le Sens propre, 1929
and this is sadness
L'Usage de la parole, Personnage biomorphe aux paroles , 1927-29
Well, it certainly is a sketch of a body...and the words fit too..canon..how about brain? Arbre? How about hands and fingers?
L'art de la conversation, 1950
The word spells out dream
Le Corps bleu, 1928
You can see the blue body of course...
Le Parfum de l'abîme, 1928
I don't like to think that this refers to a child's brain which I don't consider to be empty ...
L'Arbre de la science, 1929
Saber, horse and a pipe...where are they all going?
This was one of his advertisements done in 1931
Toffée Antoine Tonny's
Le Moisson, 1943
This certainly expresses a sensuality, a fecondity and an abundance of things to come. At the end of the war when he may have been looking for a more joyful life?
Les Amants, 1928
I am sure this cloth has something to do with his Mother's suicide when she was retrieved from the river...
Les Habitants du fleuve, 1926
Living in the river...
Le Principle d'incertidtude, 1944
Magritte "One cannot say with certaintity, from the shadow of an object, what that is in reality..."
Les Jours gigantesques ,1928
Once again, I feel this has sexual connotations...
La Magie noire (1 version), 1934
Le Double Secret, 1927
A find this a very worrying painting as if there are two secrets. One with the face and the other where skin once removed, reveals madness...
Le Rêve, 1945
Here the reflection is true to form, but what is she dreaming about?
L'Heureux Donateur, 1966
I am sure you have seen this many times...the shadow is improbable is it not...
Le Souvenir déterminant, 1942
Are we coming out of the war and what is it we remember?
La Vie des insectes, 1947
Le Galet, 1948
Le Psychologue, 1948
The strength of analysis and the fragility of a rose...
Le Joueur secret, 1927
But who are they playing against?
Le Beau Monde, 1962
Le Blanc-Seing, 1945
This gives a wonderful sense of seeing, hiding and revealing. There is nothing to stop the gap bewteen the trees and yet seeing the horse as we do, seems quite logical (for me) that it is partly hidden only to be revealed...
One of his sculptures...
La Folle des grandeurs, 1967
L'Aimable Vérite, 1966
(The Endearing Truth), the bread, the wine and maybe an apple? Is it a religious association ?
La Belle Captive, around 1950
Now what is to be captured in that frame?
La Decouverte du feu, 1936
La Belle Captive, 1931
Perhaps it is this house which has now been painted and framed?
Les Grands Rendez-Vous, 1947
At first you see the face, decorated in perls and then inside the cave there is a colomb, a pipe and a key...who is coming to see her?
L'Echelle du feu, 1934
Les Promenades d'Euclide, 1955
This has too much to do with the Greek Mathematician Euclid so I am not going to far...
Le Mal de mer, 1948
Le Prince Charmant, 1948...and oh so sure of himself before he climbs the tower to find her...
L'Ellipse, 1948
La Famine, 1948
Aren't they clowns eating themselves? Rather horrible...
L'Eloge de l'espace, 1927-28
Praise of space - yes, more space is needed...
La Folie des Grandeurs, 1962
So much of Magritte's work questions size, and scale... everything is out of proportion...
These of course are very simplistic thoughts and I am sure that the art historians may be horrified by their simplicity. His work though would drive me beserk if I had to interpret it through philosophical reflection.
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