The face of a woman found beneath layers of paint in “La cinquième saison” (1943) could be that of the Surrealist artist’s wife, Georgette Magritte.
René Magritte
Posted inArt
René Magritte’s Bad Paintings
When Belgium was occupied by Germany during World War II, René Magritte adopted the style of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and painted images based on popular cartoons.
Posted inBooks
This Is Not a Review of a Biography of Magritte
In the graphic novel Magritte: This is Not a Biography, characters from the Surrealist artist’s paintings come to life.
Posted inIn Brief
The Last Missing Section of a Magritte Painting Has Been Found
The final piece of the work was found beneath the surface of another painting, after the artist had cut up and recycled the original canvas.
Posted inArt
Serenity and a Few Surprises at the TEFAF New York Spring Fair
There’s something confident about this old-school European fair — the exhibitors let the game come to them.
Posted inBooks
A Painter Speaks, so that His Paintings Can Remain Silent
When René Magritte wrote “This is not a pipe,” he wasn’t negating the pipe so much as he was negating the language with which we attempt to grasp it.
Posted inArt
Magritte the Writer: An Interview with Kathleen Rooney
Kathleen Rooney’s most recent project, René Magritte: Selected Writings, co-edited with Eric Plattner, is somewhat out of the ordinary for this Chicago-based writer. This book offers English speakers a chance to dive into the life of René Magritte, the lauded Belgian surrealist painter.
Posted inArt
Ceci N’Est Pas un Gif: Animating Magritte
Raphaëlle Martin has published a new set of Magritte-inspired animations that demonstrates how much more bizarre the Surrealist’s paintings can be when brought to life and played on a loop.
Posted inArt
Fooling Around With Art History, on Lunch Break
When most people are bored at work, they surf Facebook. Not so with Francesco Fragomeni and Chris Limbrick, two employees at the website creation startup Squarespace who funneled their creative energy into photographic homages to the art historical canon.
Posted inIn Brief
This Magritte-Inspired T-Shirt Hates to Be Judged
Whatever you do, don’t tell Sterling Bartlett’s René Magritte–inspired tee what it can and cannot be.
Posted inArt
The Pursuit of Art, 2013
Memories fade. That’s the one good reason, as far as I can see, to compile an end-of-year list. It’s sometimes startling to retrace what attracted my attention over the course of a year; it is also instructive to determine where such a miscellany of shows fits in with ongoing areas of interest, and which ones, in hindsight, merited the time it took to review them.
Posted inArt
Leaving Home: René Magritte in Brussels and Paris
In his dismissal of Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938 — the recently opened retrospective of René Magritte (1898-1967) at the Museum of Modern Art — the New York Times’ Holland Cotter cites the ubiquity of the Belgian surrealist’s images and the relative paucity of insight to be gleaned from seeing them in person.
