Allmer Patricia - René Magritte

Ren Magritte

Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.

In the same series

Antonin Artaud David A. Shafer

Roland Barthes Andy Stafford

Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall

Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd

Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd

Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson

Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie

John Berger Andy Merrifield

Leonard Bernstein Paul R. Laird

Joseph Beuys Claudia Mesch

Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson

Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller

Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn

Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne

Mikhail Bulgakov J.A.E. Curtis

William S. Burroughs Phil Baker

John Cage Rob Haskins

Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes

Fidel Castro Nick Caistor

Paul Czanne Jon Kear

Coco Chanel Linda Simon

Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich

Jean Cocteau James S. Williams

Salvador Dal Mary Ann Caws

Guy Debord Andy Merrifield

Claude Debussy David J. Code

Gilles Deleuze Frida Beckman

Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird

Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros

Sergei Eisenstein Mike OMahony

William Faulkner Kirk Curnutt

Gustave Flaubert Anne Green

Michel Foucault David Macey

Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen

Jean Genet Stephen Barber

Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow

Gnter Grass Julian Preece

Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale

Victor Hugo Bradley Stephens

Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth

Alfred Jarry Jill Fell

James Joyce Andrew Gibson

Carl Jung Paul Bishop

Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman

Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori

Sren Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay

Yves Klein Nuit Banai

Arthur Koestler Edward Saunders

Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild

Lenin Lars T. Lih

Pierre Loti Richard M. Berrong

Jean-Franois Lyotard Kiff Bamford

Ren Magritte Patricia Allmer

Stphane Mallarm Roger Pearson

Thomas Mann Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell

Gabriel Garca Mrquez Stephen M. Hart

Karl Marx Paul Thomas

Herman Melville Kevin J. Hayes

Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne

Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan

Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun

Vladimir Nabokov Barbara Wyllie

Pablo Neruda Dominic Moran

Georgia OKeeffe Nancy J. Scott

Octavio Paz Nick Caistor

Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws

Edgar Allan Poe Kevin J. Hayes

Ezra Pound Alec Marsh

Marcel Proust Adam Watt

Arthur Rimbaud Seth Whidden

John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne

Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak

Erik Satie Mary E. Davis

Arnold Schoenberg Mark Berry

Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis

Dmitry Shostakovich Pauline Fairclough

Adam Smith Jonathan Conlin

Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell

Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel

Stendhal Francesco Manzini

Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross

Rabindranath Tagore Bashabi Fraser

Pyotr Tchaikovsky Philip Ross Bullock

Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc

Mark Twain Kevin J. Hayes

Richard Wagner Raymond Furness

Alfred Russel Wallace Patrick Armstrong

Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau

Tennessee Williams Paul Ibell

Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian

Virginia Woolf Ira Nadel

Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter

Ren Magritte

Patricia Allmer

REAKTION BOOKS

For Zo

Published by
Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
4448 Wharf Road
London N1 7UX, UK
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2019
Copyright Patricia Allmer 2019

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 9781789141801

Contents

Duane Michals, Magritte with Hand Over Face Exposing One Eye, 1965, gelatin silver print.

The show is beginning! It has begun!

Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain, Juve contre Fantmas (1911)

Interviewer: Tell us your life story in ten lines at most.
Magritte: Ten lines is far too much for me.

Magritte, 1967

As I write, a new Twitter notification shows a photograph of a protest poster being held aloft. The backdrop is familiar skyscrapers, blue sky and the word New of the New York Public Library are visible while the poster features an image reworking Ren Magrittes famous painting of a pipe that is not a pipe. Instead of the pipes bowl we see the grinning face of the current American president, Donald Trump, while Magrittes familiar line Ceci nest pas une pipe, asserting the difference between representation and reality, is rewritten in the poster as Ceci nest pas un prsident (with a final mocking negation of Trump, UNPRESIDENT, written underneath). The poster presents an act of Situationist dtournement, ripping the image from its familiar context (the gallery, the coffee-table art book) and thrusting it into a new one (political protest) to exploit its potential to generate urgent new significance. This dtourned Magritte image, generated by the Occupy Design UK Graphics Archive, now appears on numerous commercial items, from bumper stickers and T-shirts to babygrows and coffee cups.

Few artists have had their work cited, imitated, appropriated or dtourned as often as Magritte; few artists have created a visual vocabulary, a lexicon of images of supreme ambiguity and supple indetermination, which can be appropriated to express wildly different situations. What works for Rihannas limited run of ten Ceci nest pas un Delvaux bags, retailing exclusively at Barneys in 2014 at $7,350, also works to express political protest. And what works for the protest poster also works for its opposite, as is clear from the cover of Charles Leerhsens ghostwritten hagiography Trump: Surviving at the Top, published in 1990, which features the future 45th American president juggling with an apple in front of a classic Magrittean blue-sky-with-white-clouds background. A cursory look in any bookshop at book covers featuring Magritte works demonstrates the diverse range of contexts and genres in which his works seem able to signify. While Magritte, like many Surrealist artists, is often used to illustrate science-fiction works (such as the 1965 novel Fifth Planet by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, an astrophysicist and his son, which features Magrittes