Magritte and His Influence

in American Art & Popular Culture

Sherry Zerbest

April 2013

University of West Florida

Art History Independent Study

Dr. Barbara Larson

1

! The influence of Rene Magrittes Surrealist art over the decades since his death in 1967

and well into the 21st century has appeared in a vast array of media from painting to sculpture

to film to advertising. Not only did he influence the Pop Artists, Minimalists, Abstract

Expressionists and various filmmakers and photographers, his art has featured on book covers,

music albums, product advertisements, in film and the influence of his style has been compared

to the works of many contemporary artists such as Robert Gober, David Salle and Jeff Koons.

! This paper will offer an overview of Magrittes influence (mainly in America) across a

spectrum of artists and movements, although weighing heavily in Pop Art, while looking at his

roots as a Surrealist painter and includes several visual examples as they are imperative for

assisting in the overall thesis.

! The particularly semiotic aspect of Magrittes work differentiates him from other

Surrealists of his time. His use of familiar and often figurative objects concisely and flatly

painted and often mixed with words, make his work appealing for motifs, symbolism and

appropriated graphic representation. The simplistic yet mysterious quality and often witty

themes are all conducive to appropriation. Magrittes works have a unique ability of reaching

across the spectrum of art movements and communication, and indeed they have, since the

mid-20th century.

! Magrittes presence and influence in the American art scene, especially in New York, is

associated with increased commercial exposure in exhibitions and publications of his work

which also featured exclusives on the Surrealists European art shows. Critics however did not

give him much credence early on and it wasnt until the mid-50s that he reached a momentum

of popularity leading to an assimilation with the advent of Pop Art.

! Magritte did not make a trip to the United States until late in life when there was

2

a major retrospective of his work at New Yorks MOMA in 1965. The show launched a great

interest in his work in the 1960s and 70s although he had gained considerable exposure in the

press from previous smaller exhibitions outside of Manhattan. The late celebrity from the

MOMA retrospective came at a time that correlated with his illness and death just two years

later. Nevertheless, Magritte stayed active. He enjoyed New York and America with his wife

Georgette and little dog LouLou, making a trip to Texas to socialize with friend and patron

Dominique de Menil. One of his last activities as an artist was proofing compositional specs for

sculptures which were not completed until after his death.

! Three decades earlier, in 1936, Magrittes first solo exhibition in America happened at the

Julien Levy Gallery in New York followed by inclusion at the MOMAs Fantastic Art, Dada and

Surrealism show the same year. He had a second exhibit at the Levy in 1938. The allure of

Magrittes style typified the seduction of Surrealisms mystique which fed art connoisseurs and

collectors latent and exotic whims. Although Magritte distanced himself from the orthodox

Surrealists, the esoteric aspects of the movement were evident in works such as La Gcheuse [The

Bungler], 1935 (Fig. 1) and the cover for the Minotaure no.10, 1937 (Fig. 2). For all of Magrittes

contention with Breton, dismissing the subconscious and symbolism in ones dreams, Magrittes

words seemed to concede some acknowledgement of the concept: "If the dream is a translation

of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream."

! Magritte differed from his fellow Surrealists in that his approach was more about the

deliberate play of words and images than in tapping the subconscious and the dream state or

using the automatism technique pioneered by Andre Masson. He passionately rebuked the

device of the subconscious in his painting, insisting that he worked consciously and

deliberately. Art historian Suzi Gablik writes that, for Magritte, references to unconscious

3

activity only satisfy the persistent habit of explanation. The world does not offer itself up like a

dream in sleep; nor are there waking dreams.1 He discounted the veracity of psychoanalysis

and Freuds influence and did not believe in the subconscious. Magrittes style of Surrealism

was unique for its use of conventional, even mundane objects flatly painted and juxtaposed in a

curious and sometimes provocative construct. He approached his work with deliberate and

sober contemplation. Magritte was not interested in accidental effects, automaticism or other

typically Surrealist techniques, but in his own words, in an objective representation of objects -

so objective, in fact that his manner of representing them was deliberately prosaic.2

! Magrittes fellow Surrealists explored art through specific tenets of the Parisian

Surrealist Movement outlined by Andre Breton in the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 in which

he states, Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express verbally, by

means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated

by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or

moral concern." Breton defined surrealism as "Pure psychic automatism.

! Although Breton is credited with being the father of Surrealism, a term first used by

French playwright Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903, it was Giorgio de Chiricos metaphysical art

in the early 20th century that set the stage for the development of Surrealist painting. It was the

inspiration from de Chiricos The Song of Love (Fig.3) which gave Magritte an artistic

breakthrough when he reportedly first saw the work in 1922. Collocated with perspective and

spacial depth, the painting depicts an unlikely juxtaposition of familiar objects in an austere

landscape. The aura of the painting borders on melancholic dystopia and is said to have

brought Magritte to tears.3 Perhaps it was in this moment that Magritte began to understand

how to tap out the well of his inner demons through imagery in a device that suited him. It

4

might also explain why he once said that he was trying to get away from it (art); he was not

known to be forthcoming in explaining his work but the provocative substance of his paintings,

even those constructed by appropriation, lets on a secret catharsis which he most often did not

openly share.

! The aura of de Chiricos early work is one of mystery, intellect and puzzlement

conveying something seemingly unknowable or hidden. These thematic devices appealed to

Magrittes fascination with suspense and mystery. His personal manifesto was to create works

of art that made the viewer think about the relationship of the elements to one another in their

unconventional setting. Magritte explained, It is a union that suggests the essential mystery of

the world. Art for me is not an end in itself, but a means of evoking that mystery.4

! Despite Magrittes position on being associated with the orthodox Surrealists, he

nevertheless benefitted from the interest in the movement, especially as it appealed to collectors

and emerging artists such as the Abstract Expressionists who were essentially experimenting

with another form of Surrealism. Thus it would seem that Surrealism, in some aspect or another,

is the subcutaneous artery of all art movements since its birth in the early 20th century and

metamorphosis in the mid-20th century. Its death with the passing of Breton and eventually

Dali, is debated by art scholars as the genre has thrived to the 21st century manifesting in new

hybrid works along the way, inspired by the orthodox manifest. Magrittes work, like that of

others including Johns, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein crossed the threshold between

Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, helping to set the stage for Pop Arts full

impetus on American culture.

! The main driving force of Magrittes influence and exposure in America was largely due

to his professional relationship with art dealer Alexander Iolas who owned and curated the

5

Hugo Gallery in New York which specialized in Surrealism as well as other galleries and

business connections throughout the country and Europe. His New York gallery represented

such artists as Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell and Arshile Gorky. In 1947, Iolas exhibited selected

works of Magritte from his Renoiresque or sunlight period of the mid 1940s an

experimental diversion by Magritte in his creative style to ward off what he felt were the

negative vibrations of the War in Europe. The American publics reception of this style was not

well received. Iolas encouraged Magritte to abandon the experiment and return to the pre-war

attributes of his earlier paintings which he correctly predicted would be far more popular, the

poetry of which would be much appreciated. Magritte agreed to do this but presciently noted

that his Renoiresque works would be revisited later and compared to his others works. History

shows that Iolas correctly appraised this genre of Magrittes work as it remains a substandard of

Magrittes oeuvre.

! Iolas would go on to exhibit Magrittes work several times over the years, remaining an

avid supporter and friend until the artists death in 1967. During the same period, Magrittes

work was exhibited by the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York where he first exhibited his Words

& Images series in 1954. His presence in California began in 1948 when William Copley opened

the Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, promoting Magritte and other Surrealists such as Man Ray,

Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell. Art historian Dickran Tashjian, in his essay titled Magrittes Last

Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America5 notes that the pattern of dissemination was set, as

Magritte infiltrated the United States beyond Manhattan eventually gaining national exposure

in diverse venues, from the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago to Gumps

department store in San Francisco; from museums and galleries from coast to coast and points

in between. Meanwhile, thanks to Iolas, Magrittes presence in New York remained strong.

6

! Magrittes experience in advertising and graphic design manifested unmistakably in the

compositions of his paintings. His legendary The Treachery of Images (1928) series shows the

relationship between the meaning and dissociation of an image and its name, of which the most

well-known of the study, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) shows the French inscription

underneath a painting of a realistic smoking pipe. The March 1954 exhibition at the Sidney Janis

Gallery influenced younger artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, along with many

other emerging artists of the time. Of his most well-known work in the series, Magritte said,

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's

just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe," I'd have

been lying!6

! Toward the end of the 50s and by the middle of the 60s, Magrittes work became

increasingly identified with the emergence of Pop Art which was by then taking over in New

York, overtaking the post-war Abstract Expressionists. He had gained quite a bit of notoriety

and enjoyed some degree of commercial success before his death a short time later. The art

culture of the 1960s was deadpan, kitschy, sexy, superficial, reflecting the celebrity and

materialism in America. There was an artistic interest in subject matter associated with the

media and consumerism things of transient value, external, unemotional which made the

movement controversial in the question of artistic integrity.

! Magrittes particular style of Surrealism amalgamated forms of repetition, singular

motifs, words and image play, juxtaposing, illusional overlapping and seismic proportions of

oddly placed, everyday objects such as in Elective Affinities (1933), all of which attracted the

formulaic ideas of the Pop Artists. Warhol stated, Pop artists did images that anyone walking

down the street would recognize in a split secondcomics, picnic tables, mens pants,

7

celebrities, refrigerators, Coke bottles. Like Magritte, the Pop Artists often displaced materials

or objects into a different context, mixing them with typographic elements and unrelated

components to create a new narrative or to emphasize the primary image. Jasper Johns used

recurring flag and target motifs, typography and common objects such as targets. In a 1959

work titled False Start (Fig 4) Johns plays with dislocation by placing the names of colors on the

wrong corresponding color area within the painting. The work appears to celebrate diversity in

multicolor and unpredictable labels, reflecting the progressive trends in America. Richard

Hamiltons 1956 Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (Fig. 5) uses the

same devices, juxtaposing words and everyday objects from photographs, arranged

incongruously to reinvent a message on popular culture.

! Andy Warhols method of representing common consumer products in large format call

to Magrittes Personal Values (1952) (Fig. 6) in which ordinary personal effects such as a comb,

shaving brush, soap and drinking goblet are oversized and juxtaposed inside a normal sized

bedroom setting. Warhols Brillo Soap Pads (1969) and oversized print of the Campbell Soup Can

(1968) emphasize mass product consumption whereas Magrittes piece focuses attention on the

irony of great value placed on inexpensive and replaceable objects. Or, an alternative

interpretation might say that the oversize personal objects represent the emphasis placed on

vanity and pleasure while a mirror reflects a largely empty room and an open window

epitomizing the fleeting insignificance of such values. Much the same way Pop Art denotes

inane materialism. With The Listening Room (1956) (Fig. 7), Magritte uses a Surrealist theme of

discomfort, placing a fantastically large apple almost completely filling a room, leaving the

viewer with feelings of claustrophobia. Warhols uncomfortably large portraits like that of

Communist Chinese dictator Mao Tse Tung (Fig. 8) follows Magritte with the same encroachment

8

on spacial comfort. Art historian Suzi Gablik writes, "Magritte's paintings are a systematic

attempt to disrupt any dogmatic view of the physical world. By means of the interference of

conceptual paradox, he causes ordinary phenomena to inherit extraordinary and improbable

conclusions.7 One of Warhols signature styles are his works with repetition and primary colors

like Marilyn Monroe, which seems endowed with Magrittes The Song of Love I (Le Chant

d'Amour) 1963 (Fig. 9).

! Like other Pop Artists, Claes Oldenberg thought of his work as a social commentary on

popular American culture. He considers himself a Realist. His large scale sculptures such as

Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, Match Cover and Apple Core (Fig. 10) echo Magrittes

Personal Values (Fig. 5) and Listening Room (Fig. 7) where ordinary everyday objects are

colossally rendered in proportion to their surroundings in order to magnify or contrast their

perceived value or message. Oldenberg seems to have taken inspiration for oversize food

objects from Magritte when comparing such works as Memory of a Voyage (1952), The

Heartstrings (1960) and The Great Table (Fig. 11) to Oldenbergs Cake and Bottle of Notes.(Fig. 12).

Contemporary artist Jeff Koons, who like Warhol, Johns and others has collected Magritte, has

expounded on the supersize concept in the spirit of the Pop Artists and Magritte with refined

sculptures like Balloon Dog, Egg and Bunny balloon (Fig. 13) which summon Rosenquists murals

of supersize subjects painted in sheeny, lustrous color.

! Critics have questioned the controversial use of everyday objects as art objects.

Sculptures like those of Oldenberg, Koons and others bring into question the meaning of art,

hearkening back to the fuss over Duchamps readymades sculptures. Can ordinary objects be

called true art and do they degrade the idea of monumental art? Contemporary artist

Damien Hirst has drawn fire for his disturbing and controversial displays of preserved animal

9

carcasses. A gutted cow, a dissected cow, a sheep in a tank here and a shark in a tank there. Add

to that a conceptually rotting cow head in a tank, feeding a fly colony and youve got the spirit

of Surrealisms darkest nature at work. Even Magritte would be shocked, despite his own public

offerings of dissection in works like The Eternal Evidence (1930), Delusions of Grandeur (1948), and

The Drop of Water (1948) (Fig. 14).

! Ironically, Magritte did not think much of the Pop Art movement nor give much regard

to being called a precursor, or a father of the movement. He once said, And Pop! Lets just say

that its not very serious, and that its probably not even art? Or perhaps poster art, advertising

art, a very temporary fashionable art. It is effective enough in the streets, I admit, on young

girls dresses.9 Art historian Michael Draguet noted Magrittes tendency to isolate himself from

the movements of his time. His association with the Pop Art movement by proxy of the mass art

press may be partly to blame (not withstanding misreadings of his work) for the common

assessment of his paintings as witty and parodic. However, Draguet points to a quote by

Magritte which seems to underlie serious personal notions, especially weighed against the

flippant nature of Pop Art: "Pop artists came to the mistaken conclusion that they must show

the poetry of today's world. That is where their error lies. They want to express today's world,

although it is just a transitory state, a fad; and poetry does not concern passing things. Poetry is

the feeling of the real, of what it has that is most permanent."10 Magritte did not live long

enough to be able to reflect later on the Pop Art movement as so many archons of its day can

now do. If he had, he might see the legacy of his work in America given its momentum because

of the very culture that Pop Art was born out of transitory and faddish as it might have been,

it has a permanent place in American cultural history and derivatives of it, in the work of artists

like Jeff Koons are alive and well in the 21st century.

10

! Photographer Duane Michals spent time with Magritte in the 1965 after reading about

him in Harpers Bazaar magazine in an article by Suzi Gablik. Michals spent several days

photographing the artist. The Surrealistic photos of Magritte appeared in an article in Esquire

magazine in a promo for Magrittes upcoming MOMA retrospective.11 Commenting on

Magrittes paintings, Michals found them consistently amazing because they contradicted my

assumptions about the logic of the world. Obviously affected by Magrittes work, Michals said

of his own work that he became freed...to reinvent photography from just documenting reality

to questioning the nature of reality. 12

! Michels is known for his disturbing surreal imagery and for innovating the

photographic narrative, adding written text to his photos, in which a series of photos tell an

idea, much like a series of films stills. Magritte's impact on Michals is evident in these

techniques in particular as they show a connection to Magritte's compositional style in works

such as Man Reading A Newspaper (1928), and The Interpretation of Dreams (Fig. 15). Magrittes

imprinting by De Chirico's incongruous juxtaposition of objects with sonorous titles called forth

in Magritte a sense that poetry was sublime over painting and he began to use words in pictures

in his Words & Images series study, comparing words and images as means of representation.

Words as an extension of the image enhance the enigma or wit of the visual and provides an

avenue for combining poetic essence and provisional narrative, especially where the image by

itself cannot say all. Artist Barbara Kruger uses the same methodology in her photographic

works using typographic narrative to convey powerful messages. (Fig. 16).

! In addition to painting, sculpture and photography, another medium where Magrittes

11

influence has surfaced is in film. In the early 1970s, award-winning Surrealist filmmaker David

Lynch was working on his first full-length film project called Eraserhead which he finished in

1975. The atmosphere in the black and white film is a dystopian industrial landscape where the

main character Henry is a bourgeois worker in a black suit and tie, suffering from neurosis and

the anxiety of fatherhood and sexuality. It has been debated whether the film is autobio-

graphical as during the time Lynch made the film he was living in the ghetto of Philadelphia

struggling financially, professionally and as an unexpected father who (probably) married too

young. Like the main character (and like Magritte), Lynch most often wears an unassuming

bourgeois suit. But instead of a bowler hat, Lynch wears his hair very unkempt, (similar to the

character in the film but not quite as wild), which has become a trademark of the director.

! Portions of Eraserhead deal with the characters sexuality and parenthood which

manifests as zygotic sperma in the shape of little wiggly white worms, one of which he keeps

hidden protectively in a little box in his cabinet. In another scene in the film they begin

dropping from the air like sporadic rain. This motif is akin to Magrittes Meditation (Plate I)

painting in which lit candles crawl like (spermazoa) worms along a dark landscape searching

for enlightenment. These sexual motifs also appear in Magrittes Philosopher's Lamp (Plate I)

opposite an intellectual (who looks like Breton) who exhibits a pseudo erectile dysfunction in

his phallic nose while his seminal illumination (Freudian?) snakes down the table leg

Breton was Magrittes philosophical enemy. Again, in The Imaginative Faculty (Plate I) (1936), a

candle and eggs are situated to reference the male reproductive set. A scene in the film where

Henrys head is overtaken by the head of his zygote shrunken inside his suit conjures feelings

of helplessness, isolation and not ones self. This scenes counterpart we can find in Magrittes

Pilgrim in which the head is removed from the body and floats beside it. (Plate I)

12

! Magritte-esque imagery also appears in Lynchs iconic murder mystery series Twin

Peaks from the late 1980s. Recurring thematic elements from Magritte paintings appear such as

red curtains, bourgeois main character in black suit and tie, floating man, Greek statue-like

female torsos, rooms with open doors, forests/wood, dark rooms/figures/landscapes. (Plate I).

Other elements such as a character named The Log Lady (who cradles a wooden log in her arms

wherever she goes and recites psychic premonitions) recalls Magrittes Discovery, a female nude

whose body has patches of woodgrain morphing on her skin. The wood motif played heavily in

Magrittes repertoire of imagery and appears in several of his works. In The Prince of Objects

(1927) Magritte has painted a mirror which shows woodgrain showing underneath where the

glass has been partially wiped away. David Sylvester suggests13 that Magritte is proposing a

visual paradox (akin to a dream inside of a dream) in which the image we see of the mirror (as a

painting) reveals itself to be held up by the wall it is hanging on, thus the woodgrain, and thus

we are not looking at a mirror but in reality only a picture of a mirror.

! A device which Lynch uses in his films deals with the idea of transition between dream

and reality using doors as a motif. Several of Magrittes works use both doors and windows as

transitional devices. Art historian Sarah Whitfield discussing Magrittes La Rponse Imprvue

(1933) writes that the paradox of the open and closed door describes the act of concealing and

revealing. The opening suggested itself as a solution to the problem of the door, as the

door is an opening, and its purpose is to provide passage, access to what lies beyond.14

! In his Twin Peaks series Lynch uses an open door in an empty room (Plate I) to signify

transition to an ethereal state in the mind of his main character Laura Palmer. He also uses this

technique in his brilliant psychological thriller, Mullholland Drive, (arguably Lynchs magnum

opus), to signify a transition between dream and reality inside of a dream sequence which

13

signifies the main characters delusional state. In his follow-up prequel to Twin Peaks, (Fire Walk

with Me), Lynch uses this metaphor with a window for his narrative to reveal the main

characters use of substitute reality to protect her mind from acknowledging that her rapist and

seducer is her own father. Instead of him, its Bob, the stranger that crawls through her

window at night to have his way with her.

! Alfred Hitchcock knew of the Surrealists, especially Dali and was born around the same

time as Magritte. Like Magritte, not only did the director often times wear a bowler hat and don

a bourgeois suit, he loved mystery and suspense and is most well-known for two particularly

successful films in the genre, Psycho and The Birds, which he made in the late 50s and early 60s.

The 1950s was especially an active time in Hollywood for the horror and science fiction genre.

Films like Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and the The

Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) thrilled audiences. 1958s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was also a

big hit. Amusingly, Magrittes 1929 painting The Giantess seems to anticipate the

future film. In 1945 Hitchcock came into tangible contact with the Surrealists when he directed

the movie Spellbound which explored psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence designed

by Salvador Dal.15 In his 1960 film The Birds, he is said to have paid discreet homage to

Magrittan framing which is a reference to his using Magrittes style of cropping such as that

seen in his Georgette Magritte painting The Eternal Evidence (1930). The painted nude is

compartmentalized in closeup segments of the body, mimicking film sequence. It was this

cropping effect, and especially the closeups (which invents a sense of tension) something

Hitchcock is known for which impressed the famous director.10 Author Robert Short explains,

In all sorts of ways, Magrittes dislocations of everyday reality matched the cinemas repertory

of special effects. 16 Likewise, it would appear that seminal filmmakers David Lynch and

14

Alfred Hitchcock have matched the Surrealists (especially Magrittes) repertory of paradoxical

abstraction. Magrittes bird motifs in many of his paintings such as Le Principle, Deep Water,

Young Girl Eating A Bird (The Pleasure) and Black Magic (Plate II) find their counterpart when

juxtaposed with Hitchcock film promos (Plate II). If Hitchcock admired Magrittes framing, he

may very well have borrowed ideas for his film promo shots as well.

! From the mid-20th century there was a marked increase in appropriation among artists

because of commercialism, mass production and the prevalence of photography although

appropriation is nothing new and has been going on in art since about the dawn of time.

! Pop Artist Roy Lichtensteins use of appropriation is found in his early comic book

styled renderings such as Drowning Girl (1963) which was adapted directly from a 1962 DC

Comics issue titled Run for Love! 17

! Appropriation in the 21st century is especially tricky and controversial as we now live in

the age of Jean Baudrillards simulacrum and Walter Benjamins greatest fear: mechanical

reproduction. Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Rauschenberg and other artists were using existing

photography, (especially of celebrities and political figures), product advertisements and found

objects for sculpture, painting and collage. Johns did repeated compositions of the American

flag and created sculpture out of beer cans. They were influenced by Magrittes use of everyday

random objects juxtaposed and displaced in order to convey an alternative meaning and a new

way of seeing the common and familiar. Art historian Sarah Whitfield put it succinctly, The

juxtaposition of opposing ideas is one of Magritte's most frequently used devices, with which he

paints mysterious images and creates new meanings.18

Magritte has been staggeringly appropriated from around the early 1960s to the current 21st

century. He was especially hot in the 60s (and into the 1970s) when the MOMA in New York

15

created cultural buzz around his work following his first major retrospective there in 1965 and

other exhibitions around the country including two large exhibitions, Rene Magritte in America

at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts in 1961 and The Vision of Rene Magritte in

Minneapolis in 1962. His paintings were commonly used to illustrate book reviews by the New

York Times and his work was featured in major magazines like Harpers Bazaar, Life and

Esquire as well as other smaller but ubiquitous publications.

! In whole or in part, select imagery of his work has appeared in all areas of the media and

advertising including film, print, fashion, toys, television, the music industry, culinary

establishments and product merchandising, just to name a few. (Plate III). What has happened is

a sort of evolutionary branding, a Magrittesque semiotic lexicon of bowler hats, green apples,

puffy-cloud blue skies, appropriated variations of the famous phrase this is not a pipe, black

umbrellas, raining men in black suits, etc.

! Music album design is especially liberal with Magrittes imagery. Over 100+ albums

have been produced using direct images of the artists paintings or alterations of them. (Plate

III). The Beatles Apple label was inspired by Magrittes Le jeu de Mourre (The Game of Mora), 1966

(Plate III), according to Paul McCartney in an interview in The Telegraph. He explains that he and

Yoko Ono both like and own several Magrittes and that an art dealer friend dropped the

painting by one day and told him I really loved Magritte. We were discovering Magritte in the

sixties, just through magazines and things. And we just loved his sense of humor.19 !

! In an interview with Johan Ral in 1993 he said, ...this big green apple (painting), which

I still have now, became the inspiration for the logo. And then we decided to cut it in half for

the B-side!"20

One suspicious offshoot of a Magrittesque style evolution is the long journey of a familiar

16

and beloved toy that started back in the early 1950s with a graphic design artist named George

Lerner. A New Yorker born in 1922, he grew up under the artistic influence of Dada and

Surrealism. The Dadaists included humor and game creation in their art experimentation. In the

1940s George Lerner came up with an idea to create a toy in which body parts and accessories

such as eyes, nose, lips, hands and torso could be stuck into a real potato; the set also included

eyeglasses, a bowler hat and a pipe. (Plate III). By 1950, Mr. Lerner sold the idea to the Hasbro

toy company and Mr. Potato Head was born. Over the next 50 years, the toy would evolve,

shedding the real potato for a plastic one and modifications to the accessories and body parts,

but it kept the bowler hat, nose and pipe and today the toy has become an icon in American pop

culture, its most famous appearance being in the feature film Toy Story. 21

! Magritte himself utilized appropriation. He once commented that he had only produced

about 100 ideas out of 1,000. This may very well be accurate when one considers many of his

works were based on literary and film subjects.

! Magritte was fascinated with the advent of the cinema and film. He delighted in Edgar

Allen Poe, the Fantomas series of mystery and intrigue, the idea of puzzlement and irony as

well as edges of the macabre. He loved to confound the viewer of his art and described his work

by saying, "My painting is 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." Perhaps Magritte wanted the viewer to make his or her own interpretation, or to

challenge the viewer to decode the paintings hidden meaning and message, thus finding a

deeper satisfaction. On the one hand, it seems that Magritte playfully enjoyed the mystery that

17

his work elicited for patrons and yet at times appeared to be contradictory as he claimed his

paintings did not contain hidden symbolism.

! He culled ideas from publications, writers and other artists such as de Chirico from

whose work Magritte shaped the definitive style of his own art. In a feature article for TATE,

writer Neil Matheson points to a few examples in which Magritte based his work on ideas

borrowed from existing compositions. 22 He compares Magrittes 1927 work, The Menaced

Assassin to a scene in Louis Feuillades 1913 film Fantmas (Plate IV), a mystery series which

Magritte enjoyed as a child and carried into adulthood with a continuing fascination toward

mystery and intrigue. In the painting, Magritte works out an invention of his own narrative,

inspired by the film. Matheson also posits that a 1943 work, The Return of the Flame by Magritte,

showing a masked Fantomas figure against a flaming red background was copied by the artist

from an original cover of the first novel in the commercially published Fantomas series.

! In another work, Magritte borrows from FE Bilzs health manual, The Natural Method of

Healing, Vol 2 (1898) to create, Man with a Newspaper, 1928 (Plate IV). In the painting, Magritte

has simplified and updated the elements but the composition is nearly exact to the original

drawing with the exception of the compartmentalized composition. All four panels are the

same except for a slight variation in perspective and the absence of the figure after the first

panel. The work, which Tate London describes as disconcertingly deadpan, elicits a feeling

of quiet expectation as if, when viewing the subsequent panels, the viewer is expecting the

figure to return.

! In a December 1965 TIME magazine article, (Paul Nouge Exhibitions: The Comedian & the

Straight Man), historian David Sylvester writes that Magrittes The Menaced Assassin (Plate IV)

was adapted from erotic and violent poems written by his close friend Paul Nouge in the

18

mid-1920s. Sylvester recounts some lines from the poetry which seem to be evident in

Magrittes visual interpretation:

! ! In the background, at the level of the window sill, ! ! Four heads stare at the murderer.! ! In the corridor on either side of the wide open door, ! ! Two men are approaching unable as yet to discern the spectacle.! ! They are ugly customers. Crouching, they hug the wall.! ! One of them unfurls a huge net, the other brandishing a club.! ! All this will be called, "The Threatened Murderer."

! In recent years, exhibits of Magrittes works have been held at the Tate in London and

Liverpool, and at the LACMA in Los Angeles. Contemporary artists like Robert Gober, David

Salle and John Baldasarri are among those who share a visual simpatico with Magrittes work.

Robert Gober, who grew up in the 60s and 70s was surrounded by Magritte imagery that

appeared on music albums and print posters. He recalled seeing a 1959 work by Magritte23 of a

very large cigar and it must have stuck with him as years later he channeled the image into his

own creation, Cigar, 1991, a life size cigar of the same style as Magrittes earlier work. Gobers

affinity to Magritte also manifests in his leg and torso sculptures where he explores themes of

non-glamourous sexuality and fetishism.24 Gobers Untitled (Leg), 1990 and Untitled (Torso), 1990

create a nexus with Magrittes Well of Truth, 1963 and Disguised Symbol, 1928 (Plate V). Both

artists interest in focusing on detached parts of the body and candles as phallic icons effectively

convey the naked truth about sexuality, banal functionality and mortality.

! David Salles art shows an assimilation of Abstract Expressionist influence with

Magrittan nuances of the artists Words and Images methodology most heavily seen in Salles

Coming and Going, 2009 and With All Due Respect Sir, We Need Modesty Blaise, 2009 (Plate VI).

He also nods to Magrittes Sheherazade, 1950 and Cheesehead, 1999 and The 4th, 1998 (Plate VI).

19

! In June of 2012, Michael Heizers Levitated Mass (Plate V) opened to an anticipating

crowd at the LACMA in Los Angeles. The 340-ton granite megalith sculpture is based on a

concept drawing Heizer did in 1969 when he was doing earth artworks like Double Negative in

the Nevada landscape more than 40 years ago. In their online catalog, LACMA describes the

work as follows: Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from

ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract

geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering. Which seems to be what Magritte was

thinking when he painted Castle of the Pyrenees, 1959 (Plate V) in which an ancient castle fortress

sits atop a massive boulder, floating timelessly in the ethereal plane above the sea.

! The examples of Magritte influence are exhaustive and cannot possibly all be considered

here. But one thing is certain, having done around 1600 works in his comparatively shortened

life and career, Magritte left us with much to observe and dissect. Artists and historians like

David Sylvester, Abraham Hammacher, Duane Michals and Suzi Gablik have worked to build

a critical consensus for validating his work on par with Salvador Dali, Max Ernest and other

seminal artists of his day. In the meantime, Magritte can be enjoyed in daily life on a regular

basis, if you just keep an eye out for him.

Upcoming exhibitions of Magrrittes work include:Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 19261938September 28, 2013January 12, 2014MOMA, New York

This exhibition is organized at The Museum of Modern Art by Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Danielle Johnson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture. The exhibition travels to The Menil Collection, Houston (February 14June 1, 2014), and The Art Institute of Chicago (June 29October 12, 2014).

20

Notes:

1. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson, 1970; New York and London: Thames & Hudson, 1985; 1992.2. Ibid.3. Calvocoressi, Richard. Magritte. E.P. Dutton, New York, Phaidon Press Limited, 1979.4. Glueck, Grace. "A Bottle Is a Bottle." The New York Times. (December 19, 1965.)5. Tashjian, Dickran. Magrittes Last Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America. Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 15, 2006) p.29.6. Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; First edition. 1979) p. 71. 7. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson, 1970; New York and London: Thames & Hudson, 1985; 1992. 9. Draguet, Michael. The Treachery of Images: Keys for a Pop Reading of the Works of Magritte. Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 15, 2006) p.81.10. Ibid.11. Tashjian, Dickran. Magrittes Last Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America.Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. p.6112. Ibid.13. Sylvester, David . Catalogue Raisonn, vol. I (1992), nos. 183-187. Amsterdam University Press (December 31, 2001)14. Whitfield, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings and Objects 1931-1948. London, 1993, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated p.209.15. David Boyd, The Parted Eye: Spellbound and Psychoanalysis, Senses of Cinema, http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/6/spellbound/, accessed April 2013.16. Short, David. Magritte and the Cinema, NYU Press, Surrealism: Surrealist, 1997).17. MOMA Learning, http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/lichtenstein-drowning-girl-1963, accessed March 2013.18. Whitfield, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings and Objects 1931-1948. London, 1993, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated p.209.19. David Jenkins, Paul McCartney Interview, The Telegraph, 26 May 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/7748956/Paul-McCartney-interview.html, accessed March 2013.

21

20. Matteson Art.com, Magritte and the Beatles, 2009, http://www.mattesonart.com/magritte-and-the- beatles.aspx, accessed April 2013.21. Wulffson, Don. Toys!: Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); 1st edition 2000.22. Matheson, Neil. Something borrowed, Something New, Ren Magritte I. Tate Etc. issue 22 (Summer 2011).23. Karmel, Pepe. Who You Are and Where You Come from: Robert Gober and Rene Magritte. Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. p.16324. Ibid.

22

Bibliography:

Barron, Stephanie; Draguet, Michel; Dickran Tashjian. Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 15, 2006).

Calvocoressi, Richard. Magritte. E.P. Dutton, New York, Phaidon Press Limited, 1979.

David Boyd, The Parted Eye: Spellbound and Psychoanalysis, Senses of Cinema,http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/6/spellbound/, accessed April 2013.

Duncan, Michael. The Art of Influence. Art in America. May 2007 Issue. (May 2007).

Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe.. Tr. James Harkness. Berkeley : University of California Press, c1983.

Gablik, Suzi. Magritte (World of Art). Thames & Hudson. (1985).

Hammacher, A.M. Magritte. Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. (1995). Matheson, Neil. Something borrowed, Something New, Ren Magritte I. Tate Etc. issue 22 (Summer 2011).

Rothman, Roger. A Mysterious Modernism: Rene Magritte and Abstraction. Taylor & Francis. Vol. 76, No. 4. (2007).

Rothman, Roger. Rene Magritte and The Shop-Window Quality of Things. Bucknell University. The Space Between, Volume III:l. (2007).

Metzidakis, Stamos. Semiotic Intersections in Baudelaire and Magritte. L'Esprit Crateur, Volume 39, Number 1, Spring 1999, pp. 71-83. (1999).

Short, David. Magritte and the Cinema, NYU Press, Surrealism: Surrealist, 1997.

Sylvester, David. Catalogue Raisonn, vol. I (1992), nos. 183-187. Amsterdam University Press (December 31, 2001).

Sylvester, David. Magritte. Abrams. (1992).

Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; First edition. 1979.

Magritte, Rene; Torczyner, Harry; Miller, Richard. Magritte/Torczyner: Letters Between Friends. Harry N Abrams. (1994).

Whitfield, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings andObjects 1931-1948. London, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated 1993.

Wulffson, Don. Toys!: Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); 1st edition 2000.

23

(Fig. 1) La Gcheuse [The Bungler], 1935

(Fig. 2) Minotaure no.10, 1937 (Fig. 3) de Chirico - Song of Love

(Fig. 4) Jasper Johns - False Start

(Fig. 6) Magritte -Personal Values (Fig. 7) Magritte -The Listening Room

Warhol - Campbell Soup Can

Warhol - Apple

(Fig. 8) Warhol - Mao (Tse Tung)

(Fig. 5) Richard Hamilton - Just WhatMakes Todays homes so diernet, so appealing?

(Fig. 9) Magritte -The Song of Love I (Le Chant d'Amour)

Warhol - Marilyn Monroe

(Fig. 10) Oldenberg - Apple Core

Oldenberg - Match Stickls

(Fig. 12) Oldenberg - Bottle of Notes

Magritte -Memory of a Voyage

(Fig. 13) Je Koons - Balloon Dog, Egg and Bunny balloon

Magritte -The Heartstrings (Fig. 11) Magritte -The Great Table

Oldenberg - Cake

Oldenberg Lipstick

(Fig. 6) Magritte -Personal Values

Magritte - The Eternal Evidence

Damien Hirst - Cow

Damien Hirst - dissection

Damien Hirst - Cow head

Magritte - Delusions of Grandeur Magritte - The Drop of Water

(Fig. 14)

Magritte - The Interpretation of Dreams Michals - photo narrative

Michals - The Illuminated Man

Michals - A Man Dreaming in the City

Magritte - Pleasure Principle

Magritte - The Musings of the Solitary Walker, 1926

Kruger - Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face

Kruger - Small WorldKruger - We Dont Need

Another Hero

Magritte - Man Reading A Newspaper

(Fig. 15)

(Fig. 16)

David Lynch and MagrittePlate I

MagritteDavid LynchDavid Lynch - Twin Peaks Still

David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still

David Lynch - Eraserhead Still

David Lynch - Eraserhead StillMagritte - The Pilgrim

Magritte - Golconda

Magritte - The Victory

Magritte - Night Owl

Magritte - Not To Be Reproduced

Magritte - The glass key

Magritte - Philosophers LampMagritte - Imaginative Faculty

Magritte - Meditation

David Lynch - Eraserhead Still

David Lynch - Eraserhead Still

David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still

David Lynch - Twin Peaks StillDavid Lynch - Twin Peaks Promo

Alfred Hitchcock and MagrittePlate II

Magritte

Magritte Hitchcock

Magritte - Black MagicMagritte - Le PrincipleMagritte - The Fanatics, 1955

Young Girl Eating A Bird (The pleasure)

Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic

Magritte - Deep Water Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic

Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic

Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic

Alfred Hitchcock - The BirdsAlfred Hitchcock

Plate III

Magritte - The Giantess

Channeling Magritte

Ad campaign

Music album design

Book Cover

Pop illustration Consumer Products Advertising

Magrittes Le jeu de Mourre (The Game of Mora)

Beatles Apple Label

George Lerner & Mr. Potato Head

Magrittes signature body parts

Toys

Magrittes Appropriation

Plate IV

Magritte - The Return of the Flame Original Fantmas Book Cover

Magritte - The Menaced Assasin Scene from Louis Feuillades 1913 lm Fantmas."

Magritte -Man with a Newspaper FE Bilzs Health Manual, The Natural Method of Healing

Michael Heiser - Levitated Mass

Magritte -Castle of the Pyrenees

Magritte - The domain of ArnheimEd Ruscha - Lion in Oil

Plate V

Magritte - Imaginative Faculty

Gober - Untitled (candle)

Gobers Untitled (Leg)Magritte - Well of Truth Bronze

Gobers Untitled (Torso)

Magritte - Disguised Symbol

With All Due Respect Sir, We Need Modesty Blaise 2009

Coming and Going, David Salle 2009

Yellow Sail, 2010

Magritte

The 4th, 1998

Cheesehead, 1999. Oil and acrylic on canvas and linen. 60 x 120 inches.

SheherazadeMagritte, 1950

SheherazadeMagritte, 1950

Plate VI