René Magritte
Encyclopedia
René François Ghislain Magritte[p]
(21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor
and textile merchant, and Régina (née
Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte's early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide
by drowning
herself in the River Sambre
. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic
in style. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
in Brussels
, under Constant Montald
, but found the instruction uninspiring. The paintings he produced during the years 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism
and by the offshoot of Cubism
practiced by Metzinger
. Most of his works of this period are female nudes.
In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger
, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg
.
In 1922–1923, he worked as a draughtsman
in a wallpaper
factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie le Centaure in Brussels
made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed
by the failure, he moved to Paris
where he became friends with André Breton
, and became involved in the surrealist
group.
Galerie la Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage.
Surrealist patron Edward James
allowed Magritte, in the early stages of his career, to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte's pieces, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to be Reproduced
.
During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II
he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir Period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium. In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism
of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache Period", he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve
style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braque
s and Chirico
s—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul Magritte and fellow Surrealist and 'surrogate son' Marcel Mariën
, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, he returned to the style and themes of his prewar surrealistic art.
His work was exhibited in the United States in New York
in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art
in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in 1992.
Magritte died of pancreatic cancer
on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, aged 68, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery
, Evere
, Brussels.
Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop
, minimalist and conceptual art
. In 2005 he came 9th in the Walloon
version of De Grootste Belg
(The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish
version he was 18th.
(La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally"—when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.
Magritte used the same approach in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit and then used an internal caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. In these "Ceci n'est pas" works, Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself.
Among Magritte's works are a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Elsewhere, Magritte challenges the difficulty of artwork to convey meaning with a recurring motif of an easel, as in his The Human Condition series (1933, 1935) or The Promenades of Euclid (1955) (wherein the spires of a castle are "painted" upon the ordinary streets which the canvas overlooks). In a letter to André Breton, he wrote of The Human Condition that it was irrelevant if the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, "but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room." The windows in some of these pictures are framed with heavy drapes, suggesting a theatrical motif.
Magritte's style of surrealism is more representational than the "automatic"
style of artists such as Joan Miró
. Magritte's use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He described the act of painting as "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects—the sky, people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti—become united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry of this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new.”
René Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."
Magritte's constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother. Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have said that Magritte's back and forth play with reality and illusion reflects his "constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—'mother is alive'—to what he knows—'mother is dead' ".
, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol
, Jasper Johns
, Vija Celmins
, Marcel Broodthaers
, Jan Verdoodt
, Martin Kippenberger
and Storm Thorgerson
. Some of the artists' works integrate direct references and others offer contemporary viewpoints on his abstract fixations.
Magritte's use of simple graphic and everyday imagery has been compared to that of the Pop art
ists. His influence in the development of Pop art has been widely recognized, although Magritte himself discounted the connection. He considered the Pop artists' representation of "the world as it is" as "their error", and contrasted their attention to the transitory with his concern for "the feeling for the real, insofar as it is permanent." The 2006–2007 LACMA exhibition “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" examined the relationship between Magritte and contemporary art.
by The Jeff Beck Group
(reproducing Magritte's The Listening Room
), Jackson Browne
's 1974 album Late for the Sky
, with artwork inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières, Oregon's album Out of the Woods
referring to Carte Blanche, and the Firesign Theatre's album Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat
based on The Mysteries of the Horizon
.
Tom Stoppard
has written a surrealist play called After Magritte
.
Douglas Hofstadter
's book Gödel, Escher, Bach
uses Magritte works for many of its illustrations.
Paul Simon
's song "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War
", inspired by a photograph of Magritte by Lothar Wolleh
, appears on the 1983 album Hearts and Bones
.
Magritte's imagery has inspired filmmakers ranging from the surrealist Marcel Mariën
to mainstream directors such as Jean-Luc Godard
, Alain Robbe-Grillet
, Bernardo Bertolucci
, Nicholas Roeg, and Terry Gilliam
.
According to Ellen Burstyn
, in the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years of "The Exorcist", the iconic poster shot for the film The Exorcist
was inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières.
In 2010, the music video of Koolhaus by Markus Schulz
under his Dakota guise was inspired from the works of Magritte.
. Housed in the five-level neo-classical Hotel Altenloh, on the Place Royale, it displays some 200 original Magritte paintings, drawings and sculptures including The Return, Scheherazade and The Empire of Light
.
Another museum is located at rue Esseghem 135 in Brussels in Magritte's former home, where he lived with his wife from 1930 to 1954. A painting by Magritte was stolen from this museum on the morning of 24 September 2009 by two armed men. The robbery occurred just after 10 a.m., shortly after the museum opened. A man rang the doorbell, inquired if visiting hours had begun, and then pointed a gun at the museum attendant while an accomplice went inside. The thieves made museum workers and visitors kneel in a courtyard while they left on foot with a 1948 painting, Olympia, a nude portrait of Magritte’s wife. The two men, who spoke English and French, set off an alarm when they broke a glass plate that protected the painting, but had already escaped by the time the police arrived. The stolen work is said to be worth about $1.1 million.
(21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His work challenges observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
Early life and career
Magritte was born in LessinesLessines
Lessines is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut. On January 1, 2006 Lessines had a total population of 17,848. The total area is 72.29 km² which gives a population density of 247 inhabitants per km²...
, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
and textile merchant, and Régina (née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte's early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
by drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
herself in the River Sambre
Sambre
The Sambre is a river in northern France and Wallonia, southern Belgium, left tributary of the Meuse River. The ancient Romans called the river Sabis.-Course:...
. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.
Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
in style. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts
The Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels is an art school, founded in 1711.The faculty and alumni of ARBA include some of the most famous names in Belgian painting, sculpture, and architecture: James Ensor, Rene Magritte, and Paul Delvaux...
in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, under Constant Montald
Constant Montald
Constant Montald was a Belgian painter, muralist, sculptor, and teacher.Montald trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, then lived and studied briefly in Paris with fellow artist Henri Privat-Livemont at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts...
, but found the instruction uninspiring. The paintings he produced during the years 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
and by the offshoot of Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
practiced by Metzinger
Jean Metzinger
Jean Metzinger was a French painter.Metzinger was born in Nantes, France. Initially he was influenced by Fauvism and Impressionism, but from 1908 he was associated with Cubism. Metzinger was a member of the Section d'Or group of artists...
. Most of his works of this period are female nudes.
In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger
Georgette Berger
Georgette Berger was the wife of artist René Magritte. They met while Magritte was attending the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts from 1916 to 1918....
, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg
Leopoldsburg
Leopoldsburg is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg. On January 1, 2006 Leopoldsburg had a total population of 14,403. The total area is 22.49 km² which gives a population density of 640 inhabitants per km².-External links:*...
.
In 1922–1923, he worked as a draughtsman
Draughtsman
A draughtsman or draftsman , is a person skilled in drawing, either:*drawing for artistic purposes, or*technical drawing for practical purposes such as architecture or engineering...
in a wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste...
factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie le Centaure in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
by the failure, he moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
where he became friends with André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....
, and became involved in the surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
group.
Galerie la Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage.
Surrealist patron Edward James
Edward James
Edward William Frank James was a British poet known for his patronage of the surrealist art movement.-Early life and marriage:...
allowed Magritte, in the early stages of his career, to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte's pieces, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to be Reproduced
Not to be Reproduced
Not to be Reproduced is a painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. It currently is owned by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam....
.
During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir Period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium. In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache Period", he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos, Braque
Georges Braque
Georges Braque[p] was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.-Early Life:...
s and Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico
Giorgio de Chirico was a pre-Surrealist and then Surrealist Italian painter born in Volos, Greece, to a Genovese mother and a Sicilian father. He founded the scuola metafisica art movement...
s—a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul Magritte and fellow Surrealist and 'surrogate son' Marcel Mariën
Marcel Mariën
Marcel Mariën was a Belgian surrealist , poet, essayist, photographer, collagist, filmmaker, and maker of objects....
, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, he returned to the style and themes of his prewar surrealistic art.
His work was exhibited in the United States in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
in 1992.
Magritte died of pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...
on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, aged 68, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery
Schaerbeek Cemetery
Schaerbeek Cemetery, , is a cemetery belonging to the commune of Schaerbeek and where the inhabitants of Schaerbeek have the right to be buried. It is not located in Schaerbeek itself; rather it is partially in the neighbouring municipality of Evere, and partially in the village of...
, Evere
Evere
Evere is one of the nineteen municipalities located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. On January 1, 2006 the municipality had a total population of 33,462...
, Brussels.
Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
, minimalist and conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. In 2005 he came 9th in the Walloon
French Community of Belgium
The French Community of Belgium is one of the three official communities in Belgium along with the Flemish Community and the German speaking Community. Although its name could suggest that it is a community of French citizens in Belgium, it is not...
version of De Grootste Belg
De Grootste Belg
De Grootste Belg was a 2005 vote conducted by Belgian public TV broadcaster Canvas, public radio broadcaster Radio 1, and newspaper De Standaard, to determine who is the Greatest Belgian of all time...
(The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
version he was 18th.
Philosophical and artistic gestures
Magritte's work frequently displays a collection of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery of ImagesThe Treachery Of Images
The Treachery of Images is a painting by the Belgian René Magritte, painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe...
(La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally"—when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.
Magritte used the same approach in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit and then used an internal caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. In these "Ceci n'est pas" works, Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself.
Among Magritte's works are a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Elsewhere, Magritte challenges the difficulty of artwork to convey meaning with a recurring motif of an easel, as in his The Human Condition series (1933, 1935) or The Promenades of Euclid (1955) (wherein the spires of a castle are "painted" upon the ordinary streets which the canvas overlooks). In a letter to André Breton, he wrote of The Human Condition that it was irrelevant if the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, "but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room." The windows in some of these pictures are framed with heavy drapes, suggesting a theatrical motif.
Magritte's style of surrealism is more representational than the "automatic"
Surrealist automatism
Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz....
style of artists such as Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
. Magritte's use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He described the act of painting as "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects—the sky, people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti—become united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry of this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new.”
René Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."
Magritte's constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother. Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have said that Magritte's back and forth play with reality and illusion reflects his "constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—'mother is alive'—to what he knows—'mother is dead' ".
Artists influenced by Magritte
Contemporary artists have been greatly influenced by René Magritte's stimulating examination of the fickleness of images. Some artists who have been influenced by Magritte's works include John BaldessariJohn Baldessari
John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...
, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins
Vija Celmins is an American artist.-Early life:Vija Celmins immigrated to the United States with her family from Latvia when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana...
, Marcel Broodthaers
Marcel Broodthaers
Marcel Broodthaers was a Belgian poet, filmmaker and artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art works....
, Jan Verdoodt
Jan Verdoodt
Jan Verdoodt came from Sint-Pieters-Jette in Belgium. He attended the Academie van Sint-Jans-Molenbeek from 1926, under Frans Persoons, where he was attracted equally by Realism and Surrealism...
, Martin Kippenberger
Martin Kippenberger
Martin Kippenberger was a German artist known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media as well as his provocative, jocular and hard-drinking public persona....
and Storm Thorgerson
Storm Thorgerson
Storm Thorgerson is an English graphic designer, known for his work for rock bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, 10cc, Dream Theater, The Mars Volta, Muse, The Cranberries, and Biffy Clyro.-Biography:...
. Some of the artists' works integrate direct references and others offer contemporary viewpoints on his abstract fixations.
Magritte's use of simple graphic and everyday imagery has been compared to that of the Pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
ists. His influence in the development of Pop art has been widely recognized, although Magritte himself discounted the connection. He considered the Pop artists' representation of "the world as it is" as "their error", and contrasted their attention to the transitory with his concern for "the feeling for the real, insofar as it is permanent." The 2006–2007 LACMA exhibition “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" examined the relationship between Magritte and contemporary art.
In popular culture
The 1960s brought a great increase in public awareness of Magritte's work. Thanks to his "sound knowledge of how to present objects in a manner both suggestive and questioning," his works have been frequently adapted or plagiarized in advertisements, posters, book covers and the like. Examples include album covers such as Beck-OlaBeck-Ola
- Side two :- 2006 reissue bonus tracks :- Personnel :* Jeff Beck — guitars* Rod Stewart — vocals* Nicky Hopkins — piano and organ* Ronnie Wood — bass* Tony Newman — drums- Additional personnel :* Micky Waller — drums on "Sweet Little Angel"...
by The Jeff Beck Group
The Jeff Beck Group
The Jeff Beck Group were an English rock band formed in London in January 1967 by former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck. Their innovative approach to heavy sounding blues and R&B was a major influence on popular music.- The first Jeff Beck Group :...
(reproducing Magritte's The Listening Room
The Listening Room
The Listening Room is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte which is currently part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas...
), Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....
's 1974 album Late for the Sky
Late for the Sky
Late for the Sky is the third album by American singer/songwriter Jackson Browne, released in 1974 . It was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1975. It peaked at #14 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart...
, with artwork inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières, Oregon's album Out of the Woods
Out of the Woods
Out of the Woods is the second solo album from Everything but the Girl singer Tracey Thorn - her first since 1982's A Distant Shore - released on 5 March 2007 on Virgin Records. The album charted on the Billboard 200, peaking at #172 on 7 April 2007.The majority of the album's production was by...
referring to Carte Blanche, and the Firesign Theatre's album Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat
Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat
Just Folks . . . A Firesign Chat is a 1977 comedy album by The Firesign Theatre. It was the only record the group made under a new contract with Butterfly Records.-Side one:#"Hello, What's Happening? I Die Every Night ....
based on The Mysteries of the Horizon
The Mysteries of the Horizon
The Mysteries of the Horizon is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte.The painting depicts three seemingly identical men in bowler hats. They are in an outdoor setting at twilight. Though they appear to be sharing the same space each one also seems to exist in a...
.
Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
has written a surrealist play called After Magritte
After Magritte
After Magritte is a surreal comedy written by Tom Stoppard in 1970. It was first performed at the Green Banana Restaurant in London.-Synopsis:...
.
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
's book Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is a book by Douglas Hofstadter, described by his publishing company as "a metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll"....
uses Magritte works for many of its illustrations.
Paul Simon
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.Simon is best known for his success, beginning in 1965, as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached number one on the US singles...
's song "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War
Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
"Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War" is a ballad written and sung by Paul Simon.It first appeared as the eighth track on Hearts and Bones, the 1983 album that was the fifth in Simon's solo career...
", inspired by a photograph of Magritte by Lothar Wolleh
Lothar Wolleh
Lothar Wolleh was a well-known German photographer.Until the end of the sixties, Lothar Wolleh worked as a commercial photographer. He took portraits of international contemporary painters, sculptors and performance artists...
, appears on the 1983 album Hearts and Bones
Hearts and Bones
Hearts and Bones is the sixth solo album by Paul Simon. It was released in 1983.The album was originally intended to be a Simon & Garfunkel reunion album called Think Too Much, following their Central Park reunion concert in 1981, and the world tour of 1982 - 1983. In fact, some of the songs...
.
Magritte's imagery has inspired filmmakers ranging from the surrealist Marcel Mariën
Marcel Mariën
Marcel Mariën was a Belgian surrealist , poet, essayist, photographer, collagist, filmmaker, and maker of objects....
to mainstream directors such as Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
, Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...
, Nicholas Roeg, and Terry Gilliam
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
.
According to Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn is a leading American actress of film, stage, and television. Burstyn's career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next ten years she appeared in several films and television series before joining the Actors Studio in 1967...
, in the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years of "The Exorcist", the iconic poster shot for the film The Exorcist
The Exorcist (film)
The Exorcist is a 1973 American horror film directed by William Friedkin, adapted from the 1971 novel of the same name by William Peter Blatty and based on the exorcism case of Robbie Mannheim, dealing with the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s desperate attempts to win back her...
was inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières.
In 2010, the music video of Koolhaus by Markus Schulz
Markus Schulz
Markus Schulz, born , is a German trance music DJ and producer who resides in Miami, Florida, USA. He is best-known for his weekly radio show titled Global DJ Broadcast that airs on Digitally Imported radio, After Hours FM and other online stations...
under his Dakota guise was inspired from the works of Magritte.
Magritte Museum
The Magritte Museum opened to the public on 30 May 2009 in BrusselsBrussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
. Housed in the five-level neo-classical Hotel Altenloh, on the Place Royale, it displays some 200 original Magritte paintings, drawings and sculptures including The Return, Scheherazade and The Empire of Light
The Empire of Light
The Empire of Light is a series of paintings by René Magritte painted between 1950 and 1954.-External links:* * *...
.
Another museum is located at rue Esseghem 135 in Brussels in Magritte's former home, where he lived with his wife from 1930 to 1954. A painting by Magritte was stolen from this museum on the morning of 24 September 2009 by two armed men. The robbery occurred just after 10 a.m., shortly after the museum opened. A man rang the doorbell, inquired if visiting hours had begun, and then pointed a gun at the museum attendant while an accomplice went inside. The thieves made museum workers and visitors kneel in a courtyard while they left on foot with a 1948 painting, Olympia, a nude portrait of Magritte’s wife. The two men, who spoke English and French, set off an alarm when they broke a glass plate that protected the painting, but had already escaped by the time the police arrived. The stolen work is said to be worth about $1.1 million.
Selected list of works
- 1920 Landscape
- 1922 The Station and L'Écuyère
- 1923 Self-portrait, Sixth Nocturne, Georgette at the Piano and Donna
- 1925 The Bather and The Window
- 1926 The Lost Jockey, The Mind of the Traveler, Sensational News, The Difficult CrossingThe Difficult CrossingThe Difficult Crossing is the name given to two oil-on-canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The original version was completed in 1926 during Magritte's early prolific years of surrealism and is currently held in a private collection. A later version was completed in 1963 and...
, The Vestal's Agony, The Midnight Marriage, The Musings of a Solitary Walker, After the Water the Clouds, Popular Panorama, Landscape and The Encounter - 1927 Young Girl Eating a Bird, The Oasis (started in 1925), ″Le Double Secret", The Meaning of Night, Let Out of School, The Man from the Sea, The Tiredness of Life, The Light-breaker, A Passion for Light, The Menaced AssassinThe Menaced AssassinThe Menaced Assassin is a 1927 oil on canvas painting by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte.The main subject of the painting, a blood-smeared nude woman, is seen lying on a couch. The assassin of the painting's title, a well-dressed man, stands ready to leave, his coat and hat on a chair next...
, Reckless Sleeper, La Voleuse, The Fast Hope, L'Atlantide and The Muscles of the Sky - 1928 The Lining of Sleep (started in 1927), Intermission (started in 1927), The Flowers of the Abyss, Discovery, The Lovers I & II, The Voice of Space, The Daring Sleeper, The Acrobat's Ideas, The Automaton, The Empty MaskThe Empty MaskThe Empty Mask is a painting by Belgian surrealist René Magritte.In his essay Words and Images, published in 1929, Magritte observed that each image "suggests that there are others behind it"...
, Reckless Sleeper, The Secret Life and Attempting the Impossible - 1929 The Treachery of ImagesThe Treachery Of ImagesThe Treachery of Images is a painting by the Belgian René Magritte, painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe...
(started in 1928), Threatening Weather and On the Threshold of LibertyOn the Threshold of LibertyOn the Threshold of Liberty refers to two oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The work depicts a large room with the walls paneled with different scenes or windows... - 1930 Pink Belles, Tattered Skies, The Eternally Obvious, The Lifeline, The Annunciation and Celestial Perfections
- 1931 The Voice of the Air, Summer and The Giantess
- 1932 The Universe Unmasked
- 1933 Elective AffinitiesElective Affinities (painting)Elective Affinities is a 1933 painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The title is taken from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities.Magritte had the following to say about this work:...
, The Human Condition and The Unexpected Answer - 1934 The Rape
- 1935 The Discovery of Fire, The Human ConditionThe Human Condition (painting)The Human Condition generally refers to two similar oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. One was completed in 1933 and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The other was completed in 1935 and is part of the Simon Spierer Collection in...
, Revolution, Perpetual Motion, Collective Invention, The False Mirror and The Portrait - 1936 Surprise Answer, Clairvoyance, The Healer, The Philosopher's Lamp, Spiritual Exercises, Portrait of Irène Hamoir, La Méditation and Forbidden Literature
- 1937 The Future of Statues, The Black Flag, Not to be ReproducedNot to be ReproducedNot to be Reproduced is a painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. It currently is owned by the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam....
, Portrait of Edward James and Portrait of Rena Schitz, On the Threshold of LibertyOn the Threshold of LibertyOn the Threshold of Liberty refers to two oil on canvas paintings by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The work depicts a large room with the walls paneled with different scenes or windows... - 1938 Time TransfixedTime TransfixedTime Transfixed is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. It is part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and is usually on display in the museum's new Modern Wing, though currently it is on loan to the Tate Liverpool as part of their Magritte...
, The Domain of Arnheim and Steps of Summer - 1939 Victory
- 1940 The Return, The Wedding Breakfast and Les Grandes Espérances
- 1941 The Break in the Clouds
- 1942 Misses de L'Isle Adam, L'Ile au Tréson, Memory, Black Magic, Les compagnons de la peur and The Misanthropes
- 1943 The Return of the Flame, Universal Gravitation and Monsieur Ingres's Good Days
- 1944 The Good Omens
- 1945 Treasure Island, Les Rencontres Naturelles and Black Magic
- 1946 L'Intellience and Les Mille et une Nuits
- 1947 La Philosophie dans le boudoir, The Cicerone, The Liberator, The Fair Captive, La Part du Feu and The Red Model
- 1948 Blood Will Tell, Memory, The Mountain Dweller, The Art of Life, The Pebble, The Lost Jockey, God's Solon, Shéhérazade, L'Ellipse and Famine and The Taste of Sorrow
- 1949 Megalomania, Elementary Cosmogany, and Perspective, the Balcony
- 1950 Making an Entrance, The Legend of the Centuries, Towards Pleasure, The Labors of Alexander, The Empire of Light II, The Fair Captive and The Art of Conversation
- 1951 David's Madame Récamier (parodying the Portrait of Madame RécamierPortrait of Madame RécamierPortrait of Madame Récamier is an 1800 portrait of Juliette Récamier by Jacques Louis David showing her reclining on an empire style sofa in an empire line dressed as a modern vestal virgin...
), Pandora's Box, The Song of the Violet, The Spring Tide and The Smile - 1952 Personal Values and Le Sens de la Pudeur
- 1953 GolcondaGolconda (painting)Golconda is an oil painting on canvas by Belgian surrealist René Magritte, painted in 1953. It is usually housed at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas....
, The Listening RoomThe Listening RoomThe Listening Room is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte which is currently part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas...
and a fresco for the KnokkeKnokkeKnokke is one of a group of communities that are all grouped in the administrative community Knokke-Heist, in the province of West Flanders in Flanders, Belgium. Knokke itself has 15,653 inhabitants .Knokke-Heist has 33,818 inhabitants ....
Casino - 1954 The Invisible World, The Explanation and The Empire of LightThe Empire of LightThe Empire of Light is a series of paintings by René Magritte painted between 1950 and 1954.-External links:* * *...
- 1955 Memory of a Journey and The Mysteries of the HorizonThe Mysteries of the HorizonThe Mysteries of the Horizon is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte.The painting depicts three seemingly identical men in bowler hats. They are in an outdoor setting at twilight. Though they appear to be sharing the same space each one also seems to exist in a...
- 1956 The Sixteenth of September
- 1957 The Fountain of Youth and The Enchanted Domain
- 1958 The Golden Legend, Hegel's Holiday, The Banquet and The Familiar World
- 1959 The Castle in the Pyrenees, The Battle of the Argonne, The Anniversary, The Month of the Grape Harvest and The Glass Key
- 1960 The Memoirs of a Saint
- 1962 The Great Table, The Healer, Waste of Effort, Mona Lisa (circa 1962) and L'embeillie (circa 1962)
- 1963 The Great Family, The Open Air, The Beautiful Season, Princes of the Autumn, Young Love, La Recherche de la Vérité and The Telescope
- 1964 Evening Falls, The Great War, The Son of ManThe Son of ManThe Son of Man is a 1964 painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.Magritte painted it as a self-portrait. The painting consists of a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured...
and Song of Love - 1965 Carte Blanche, The Thought Which Sees, Ages Ago and The Beautiful Walk (circa 1965)
- 1966 The Shades, The Happy Donor, The Gold Ring, The Pleasant Truth, The Two Mysteries, and The Mysteries of the Horizon
- 1967 Les Grâces Naturelles, La Géante, The Blank Page, Good Connections, The Art of Living and several bronze sculptures based on Magritte's previous works.
External links
- Foundation Magritte
- The biography and works of Rene Magritte
- René Magritte Museum in BrusselsBrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
- Magritte at Artcyclopedia
- Rene Magritte: The Pleasure Principle - Exhibition at Tate Liverpool, UK 2011
- University of Iowa Art Gallery
- Musée Magritte Museum at BrusselsBrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
- A visit to the Musée Magritte Museum
- Patricia Allmer, "La Reproduction Interdite: René Magritte and Forgery" in Papers of Surrealism, Issue 5, Spring 2007.