Friday, March 10, 2017

MAGRITTE. THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES


The painter René Magritte (1898–1967) was a conjurer of enig­matic paint­ings. In a concen­trated solo exhi­bi­tion devoted to the great Belgian Surre­alist, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frank­furt explores his rela­tion­ship to the philo­soph­ical currents of his time.

Magritte did not see himself as an artist, but rather as a thinking human being who conveyed his thoughts through his painting. Throughout his life he sought to imbue painting with meaning equal to that of language. Driven by his curiosity and his affini­ties with some of the leading philoso­phers of his age, such as Michael Foucault, he created a remark­able body of work and devel­oped an altered view of the world that is reflected in a unique combi­na­tion of master­fully precise painting and concep­tual processes.

The exhi­bi­tion sheds light on Magritte’s philo­soph­ical inves­ti­ga­tions in five chap­ters. His word pictures reflect his funda­mental views on the rela­tion­ship between language and visual imagery. Other essen­tial picto­rial formulas are concerned with legends and myths asso­ci­ated with the inven­tion and defi­n­i­tion of painting. The quasi-scien­tific method Magritte applied in his painting bears witness to his distrust of simple answers and simplistic realism.



René Magritte, La Lampe philosophique, 1936, Oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm, Private collection © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

The Schirn is presenting Magritte’s master­pieces of enig­matic painting from the 1920s to the 1960s, among them his emblem­atic self-portrait enti­tled "La Lampe philosophique" (1936),


René Magritte, La Condition Humaine, 1935, Oil on canvas, 54 x 73 cm, Norfolk Museums Service (accepted by HM Government in lieu of tax and allocated to Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery) © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

"La Condi­tion Humaine" (1948),


René Magritte, Les Mémoires d’un saint, 1960, Oil on canvas, 80 x 99,7 cm, The Menil Collection, Houston © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
"Les Mémoires d’un Saint" (1960),



 René Magritte, Le beau monde, 1962, Oil on canvas, 100 x 81 cm, Private collection, Courtesy Sotheby’s © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

"Le Beau Monde" (1962),


René Magritte, L'Heureux donateur, 1966, Oil on canvas, 55,5 x 45,5 cm, Musée d'Ixelles-Brussels, Photo: Mixed Media © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
and "L’Heureux Dona­teur" (1966).


René Magritte, Les Amants, 1928, Oil on canvas, 54 x 73.4 cm, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Gift of Richard S. Zeisler, Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

René Magritte, La colère des dieux, 1960, Oil on canvas, 80 x 70 cm, Private collection © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

René Magritte, La réponse imprévue, 1933, Oil on canvas, 82 x 54,4 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Photo: J. Geleyns - Ro scan / Charly Herscovici, with his kind authorization – c/o SABAM-ADAGP, 2016 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017


René Magritte, La main heureuse, 1953, Oil on canvas 50,5 x 65 cm, Collection Diane SA, Photo: Nicolas Giudice – Objectif- Fontaine –l’Evêque (Belgium) © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017



René Magritte, La lecture défendue, 1936, Oil on canvas, 54,4 x 73,4 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Photo: J. Geleyns - Ro scan / Charly Herscovici, with his kind authorization – c/o SABAM-ADAGP, 2016 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
René Magritte, Variante de la tristesse, 1957, Oil on canvas, 50 x 60 cm, Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth, Photo: Acorn Photo, Perth © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

René Magritte, This is not a pipe, 1935, Oil on canvas, 27 × 41 cm, Private collection © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017



René Magritte, L’Art de la conversation, 1950, Oil on canvas, 51.4 × 59.1 cm, New Orleans Museum of Art, Gift of William H. Alexander, 56.61 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017



René Magritte, Le palais de rideaux III, 1928/29, Oil on canvas, 81.2 x 116.4 cm, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017


The exhi­bi­tion features some 70 artworks, including numerous master­pieces from major inter­na­tional museums as well as public and private collec­tions, among them the Musée Magritte in Brus­sels, the Kunst­mu­seum Bern, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Menil Collec­tion in Houston, the Tate in London, the Metro­pol­itan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and the National Gallery of Art in Wash­ington, D.C..

CURATORS

Didier Ottinger, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris; Dr. Martina Wein­hart, Schirn Kunsthalle Frank­furt

CATALOG


MAGRITTE. THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES

Edited by Didier Ottinger. Fore­word by Philipp Demandt. Essays by Jan Blanc, Barbara Cassin, Michel Draguet, Jacque­line Licht­en­stein, Didier Ottinger, Klaus Speidel, and Victor I. Stoi­chita. 208 pp., 28.0 x 23.5 cm (vertical format), 157 color illus­tra­tions, Prestel Verlag, Munich, London, New York, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7913-6723-1,