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 Magritte -- Book by René Magritte; , 1957
FOREWORD
"There is no Surrealist art," Georges Hugnet once wrote, calling attention to the fact that Surrealism is not a style nor a method of painting but an effort to restore to man through any means possible the consciousness of his interior world where the objects of sense unite with meaning. Serving this purpose, form is not created to delight the eye but to stimulate the mind to recognize itself and the hidden range of its activity.
The basis of the surreal is the exact antithesis of the persistent popular tradition that describes all experience in terms of distinct "objective" and "subjective" worlds. In the art of the Surrealist the "objective" world refuses to remain a separate realm but actively unites with our imagination to break down the confining walls of this simple rational deceit, freeing the mind to invest the world of sense with its own complex meanings. In consequence, we look with fresh eyes upon the objects of space and with new comprehension on the mysterious expanse of our minds. And in this new unity there is peculiar satisfaction.
In this general sense, although long ago he ceased to follow many of the theories of the Paris group, René Margitte is a Surrealist. His paintings are, for the most part, relentlessly logical, so relentless that they destroy logic itself by showing how poor an agent it is for comprehending either sensory perception or the images of the mind. Each painting in its own way makes one aware of a visual problem, an illusive idea, a provocative image which seems transparently simple |in statement, yet remains active as a problem. Because his images draw their material so often from normal daily experience, they are the more persuasive in their haunting suggestion. Further, they make us conscious of the wonder of our own mind's speculation rather than of a personal realm of fantasy belonging solely to the artist.
Magritte's art is the sober and reflective revelation of a mature and sensitive mind. On behalf of the Copley Foundation I should like to thank the Belgian Ministry of Education for its kind assistance in the preparation of this monograph and especially for permission, together with that of the Éditions de Sikkel, Antwerp, to publish a translation of Scutenaire's illuminating essay on Magritte. The essay was first published in French in 1948. The color plate of "On the Threshold of Liberty" from the collection of Mrs. and Mrs. J. Berthold Urvater is published with the kind permission of its owners and through the helpful co-operation of the Éditions de la Connaissance, Brussels. "The Liberator" is reproduced through the courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum, and the paintings in gouache through the kind consent of their owners, Mr. and Mrs Barnet Hodes. |
The art of painting, as I conceive of it, consists in representing through pictorial technique the unforeseen images that might appear to me at certain moments, whether my eyes are open or shut.
It would not be difficult to hit upon some ignored activity in my brain and charge it with having been responsible for determining the content of what I call an "unforeseen image." References to unconscious activity satisfy, if you wish, the persistent habit of explanation. But we get no enrichment from a thing explained. In effect, the thing explained drops out of sight in favor of the practical explanation itself or a more or less intelligent hypothesis. I very readily avoid explaining the things I love. I am incapable of believing in the necessity of an unconscious activity that reduces consciousness to the manifestation of a superficial mechanism. For my part, I find rather comic the seriousness of specialists and victims of the "unconscious." How can one avoid seeing the ridiculousness of that illustrious writer (whose name I cannot recall) who saw fit to advise those interested when he went to bed by solemnly inscribing on the door of his bedroom, "Poet at work."
Certain images are the models for the paintings that I like to paint. In my opinion, nothing other than images should be represented in painting. I have no desire, therefore, to express ideas or sentiments through painting, even if they seem to me extraordinary; not even those that pretend to originate in a so-called unconscious. The titles of my paintings accompany them in the way that names correspond to objects, without either illustrating or explaining them. The art of painting, like many things, can give rise to confusions, simple or difficult: notably, the art called "fantastic," which sometimes appears charming and attractive but more often sordid and puerile by choice. Its false reputation describes it as being capable of discovering or imagining a privileged world that purports to be--if one listens to the adepts of the "fantastic"--truer than the world itself.
As I conceive of it, the art of painting is neither easy nor difficult. I know that at certain moments unforeseen images appear to me and that they are the models of the pictures I like to paint. These images seem to me to dominate my ideas and my feelings, good or bad. They truly dominate them if they reveal the present as an absolute mystery.
RENÉ MAGRITTE, 1957 |
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