Rene Magritte: Exploring the Mind of a Surrealist Artist

[00:00:00]In the 1920’s a Belgian artist began producing  thought-provoking images that challenged peoples’   preconditioned perceptions of reality. His public  image of an average man in suit and bowler hat,   living in the suburban anonymity  of Brussels—was designed to deflect   inquiries into his personal life. He shunned  all attempts to decode the meaning of his work.   The idea doesn’t matter, he said, ‘only the  image counts, the inexplicable and mysterious   image.’ Welcome to the world of Rene Magritte.

[00:00:51]René François Ghislain Magritte was born in  Lessines in the Belgium in the province of   Hainault on the 21st of November 1898. He  was the son of Leopold Magritte, a tailor,   and his wife Adeline, who was a milliner. He  had two younger brothers, Raymond and Paul.   Besides being a tailor, his father also ran  a textile manufacturing business which was   intermittently successful. But his father was  aggressive, an irreverent philanderer and social   climber whose behaviour often resulted in periods  of financial difficulty. That and the fact he and   his three unruly sons, were seen collectively  as a “bad lot” by locals meant that between   1902 and 1910 the Magritte family moved several  times, first to Chatelet and finally to Charleroi.  At the age of 12 in 1910 Rene Magritte began  drawing lessons designed for children. But two   years later in 1912 tragedy struck when Magritte’s  41 year old mother committed suicide by drowning   herself in the river Sambre. This was not the  first time she had tried to end her own life;   she had attempted it many times, often  resulting in her husband Léopold locking   her in bedroom for long periods. It is rumoured, that Magritte was   present when her body, with the face covered  completely by her white dress, was recovered   from the river. Whilst this is probably a myth  propagated by his governess, the image of a head   covered in cloth often occurs in his paintings. Following the death of his mother, Magritte and   his two brothers were brought up by a governess  and their grandmother. Magritte attended grammar   school and it was here in 1913 he first met  Georgette Berger who would later become his wife.  In 1916 Magritte enrolled at the Academy  des Beaux Art in Brussels and stayed for two   years. He attended courses by Frans Van Damme,  who introduced him to Impressionist Realism   and Constant Montald, the symbolist painter. The beginning of 1918 he met various members of   the contemporary Belgium avant garde including the  poet Pierre Bourgeoise and the abstract painter   Pierre Flouquet, with whom he shared a studio for  a short period. It was around this time he became   interested in the dynamism of Italian Futurism. In 1919 Magritte got to know Theo van Doesburg,   the leader of the De Stijl group who  had come to Brussels to give a lecture   on the Dutch group’s purist theories. Later that  year he got engaged to his childhood sweetheart   Georgette Berger, who at the time, working with  her sister in an artist’s cooperative in Brussels.  At the beginning of 1921 Magritte started his  military service in Beverloo, Belgium, finishing   his tour of duty as a mapmaker in 1922. During  this time, he hardly painted at all. Shortly after   leaving the military, he married Georgette Berger. Later in 1922 Magritte took a job as a designer at   the Peeters-Lacroix wallpaper factory in a  Brussels suburb. He worked with the artist   and designer Victor Servranckx with whom he  co-authored the pamphlet, ‘Pure Art - a defence   of the aesthetic’. Magritte’s paintings at this  time were heavily influenced by Analytical Cubism   as can be seen in this painting, ‘The Model’. He left the wallpaper factory in 1923   to concentrate on designing advertising  posters and exhibition stands. He also designed   the cover for a volume of poetry by Pierre  Bourgeoise whose portrait he painted in 1920.  In 1925 Magritte published a periodical inspired  by Dadaism, but only one issue was produced.   But it was around this time he first saw the  work of Giorgio de Chirico and in particular   the painting, The Song of Love. Not only was he  inspired by the painting, but his work also began   to display a similar desolate and mysterious  mood that de Chirico created in his own work.  During 1926 his transformation into a figurative  artist continued. He gave up his advertising   work and produced his first successful  surrealist painting, ‘The Lost Jockey’.   The following year he held his first one man  show, at the Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels.   Exhibited in this show was the painting that  launched his career as a Surrealist painter, ‘The   Menaced Assassin’. This painting was influenced  by the pre-World War I popular crime fiction film   series Fantômas of which Magritte was an avid fan.  The placement of two figures that flank the door   come from a scene from, The Murderous Corpse,  a film from the series’ first released in 1913.  It was painted in this deadpan style that  would make him famous, each figure appears   to be in a state of suspended animation. Its  cinematic staging suggests a menacing narrative,   but the specifics remain elusive. This conflict  between visual details and a coherent meaning   makes it difficult to create a  logical storyline. This conflict   Magritte would exploit in many of his paintings. Whilst some elements of the one-man show were   generally well received, Magritte was disheartened  by the overall response. So later in 1927 he   and Georgette left Brussels and moved to a village  near Paris, where they stayed for three years. In   Paris, Magritte joined the French surrealist group  led by Andre Breton and made friends with Paul   Eluard, Hans Harp, Joan Miro and Salvador Dali. Magritte’s father died in 1928, the year   the Beaux Art Museum in Grenoble  became the first public institution   to buy a Magritte painting, ‘Left behind by  the Shadow’ which he had painted in 1926.  Together with Paul Eluard and his wife Gala,  he visited Salvador Dali in Cadaques in 1929.   Not long afterwards Gala Eluard  who would become Dali’s wife.  Magritte enjoyed challenging artistic conventions  of representation and with this painting,   ‘The False Mirror’ of 1929 Magritte posed a  puzzle about observation. The enormous eye fills   the canvas. The eye looks at the viewer, while  the viewer looks both at and through the eye,   as through a window, becoming both observer and  observed. The Treachery of Images painted the same   year shows a pipe. It could be an advertisement  but below the pipe Magritte has painted the words,   "This is not a pipe". This seems a contradiction  but is actually true. The image is a pipe,   but this is a painting, it is not a pipe.  Image and language tell different stories   urging the viewer, to ask which, if  either, is more “real” than the other.  Magritte was becoming increasingly disillusioned  with the "darker", more extreme subjects of the   Parisian Surrealists. By 1930 he felt increasingly  ignored by the Parisian Surrealists and after his   wife Georgette was publicly criticised for wearing  a crucifix, they returned to the more bourgeois   and familiar surroundings of Belgian Surrealism. He now had no source of income, so he resumed   his advertising work, setting up the advertising  Agency ‘Dongo’ with his brother. It was relatively   successful, even though the dining room in his  flat had to double up as his studio. It was after   the break with the Parisian Surrealist group  that Magritte began to find his unique voice.   He began to find ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’, posed  by different types of objects, a method that   enabled him to challenge and reconfigure the most  commonplace elements of everyday life. He claimed   this philosophical method came to him after waking  from a dream in 1932. In his semi-conscious state,   he looked at a birdcage that was in his room  and saw not the bird that inhabited the cage,   but an egg. This ‘splendid misapprehension’  as he called it, allowed him to grasp,   as he said, ‘a new and astonishing poetic secret’. In 1932 he joined the Communist Party but left   shortly afterwards after a difference of  opinion. Later in 1934 Magritte’s drawing,   ‘The Rape’ appeared on the cover of Andre  Breton’s, pamphlet, “What is Surrealism”.  Magritte re-joined the Belgian Communist  Party in 1936 and designed covers for musical   scores. Shortly afterwards Magritte met a young  performance artist, Sheila Legge, with whom he   began an affair. As a distraction he arranged  for his friend, Paul Colinet, to entertain and   distract his wife, but this led to an affair  between Georgette and Paul. It was not until   1940 that Magritte and his wife were reconciled. During 1937 Magritte visited the banker Edward   James in London and painted three large portraits  of him. He was also invited to give a lecture at   the London Gallery in November 1937 during an  exhibition of works by young Belgian artists.  Just as Magritte was achieving  success and recognition,   the Second World War broke out. In 1940  Magritte left Belgium following the German   invasion and moved to Carcassonne in France  where he painted portraits on commission.   However, he returned to Brussels later in the  year and his decision to remain in Belgium   during the Nazi occupation caused a  split between him and André Breton.  The suffering and violence caused by the war  led Magritte to abandon the darker elements of   surrealism. He wrote, "The sense of chaos and  panic, which Surrealism hoped to foster so that   everything might be called into question, was  achieved much more successfully by those idiots   the Nazis... Against widespread pessimism, I  now propose a search for joy and pleasure."   Hence his work became inspired by the palette  and voluptuous nudes of Pierre-Auguste   Renoir. This was a heroic attempt to  explore the more beautiful side of life.  Works from this period, such as The Return of the  Flame and The Clearing, demonstrate this move,   with their brighter palettes and  more impressionistic technique.  In 1943 he exhibited the first  pictures of his Renoir period,   but using a bright and impressionistic palette as  a subversive response to the horrors of the war,   did little to improve his finances. Money was  tight. To supplement his income, he began to forge   currency. He also started to forge Old Masters  and the modern artists Max Ernst, Paul Klee,   Georges Braque and Picasso. Most of his efforts  were fairly obvious fakes. But after Magritte’s   death the artist Marcel Mariën wrote an  article exposing Magritte’s forgeries and   his own complicity in the enterprise. Georgette  was outraged and sued Mariën, but lost the case.  In 1945 Magritte re-joined the Belgian  Communist Party. His painting, “The Red Model”   appeared on the cover of the new edition  of Breton’s surrealism and the painter.  In 1946 the Belgium surrealists, including  Magritte, published the first manifesto   of ‘Surrealism in full Sunlight’, which proposed  an optimist form of surrealism. Andre Breton   reacted negatively to their ideas, so Magritte  and his friends began to distance themselves   from the Parisian surrealists and his indulgence  with the Belgian Communist Party finally ended.  Rene Magritte described his paintings as visual  images which conceal nothing. They evoke mystery   and indeed when one sees one of my pictures  one askes oneself this simple question.   ‘What does that mean? It doesn’t mean  anything because mystery means nothing.’  In 1951 Magritte was commissioned to paint murals  for the Knokke Casino, in Knokke a small town on   the Belgian coast. The casino was a late-1920s  building that was badly damaged during the War   but had renovated. Magritte created a giant  360° mural, comprising eight panels called, “The   Enchanted Domain”. It was a celebration of some of  his best-known images. To create the enormous work   Magritte used colour transparencies to project  the images on to the walls and interior   decorators actually did the painting. During the 50’s Magritte bought a lot   of expensive photographic equipment  and began making a series of short   films, some had scripts which he wrote with  friends and were often based on his paintings.   That year Magritte was awarded the  Guggenheim prize for Belgium artists.  In 1957 Magritte created the mural, “The Ignorant  Fairy” for the Palais de Beaux Arts in Charleroi.   It was created using the same methods  and techniques as the mural of 1953   and was over 16 metres wide. Greater success  now allowed him to move to 97 rue de Mimosas, a   much bigger house where he remained until  his death. Even though he now had the space,   he still retained the habit of painting in the  dining room, dressed in his suit and bow tie.  Around 1963 Magritte was  diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,   but he continued to paint. He still travelled,  visiting Italy with Georgette in April 1965 and   later that year, despite deteriorating health, the  Magrittes’ visited the U.S.A for the first time   to see Magritte’s retrospective exhibition  at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  After a short stay in hospital Magritte died in  his own bed of pancreatic cancer, on the 15th of   August 1967 at his house on the Rue des Mimosas in  Brussels. He was 69 years old. Earlier that year   he had visited Italy to complete and sign the wax  models for eight sculptures, which were to be made   at the Verona forge works. Unfortunately,  he never lived to see the final bronzes.  Magritte was working on this unfinished  painting when he died. The uncompleted   painting remained on its easel in the dining room  until the death of Georgette Magritte in 1986.  The Magritte Museum which  opened in Brussels in 2009   holds over 200 of Magritte’s paintings, drawings  and sculptures, and is well worth a visit.  Thank you for watching. I hope you have enjoyed  it. If you would like to see more of my videos,   why not subscribe? It’s free. And  clicking the little black bell   will tell you when my next video is released. If you want to support the making of my videos,   then please check out my Patreon Channel where  you can find lots of interesting rewards in   return for your patronage. Thanks again.  I’ll see you in the next video. Goodbye.