DECODING MAGRITTE

Magritte's mature work is instantly recognisable with its smooth surrealistic surfaces, geometric precision and conceptual challenges to the whole idea of representation. Using interviews with people who knew Magritte including his widow Georgette and drawing on the insights of structuralist theorists such as Foucault and Jakobson, the author investigates the different periods and influences of Magritte's painting. In the process he offers a reading of Magritte's aesthetics based on structuralist theories of language and the concept of aphasia, a disconnect between the brain and the means of communication. Magritte's own monograph on "L'Art pur", published in 1922, advocates an anti-decorative aesthetic and basic pictorial forms inspired by modern machinery. His work at the time is comparable with the lyrical abstract expressionism of Kandinsky, with whom he shared a similar palette, though Magritte himself said he was more enthused by Mondrian. The style we associate with Magritte's mature work is exemplified in "Les droits de l'homme" (the rights of man) of 1948, in which a cloaked figure like a chess piece is painted in accordance with the laws of perspective, light and shade, with the entire space of the picture consistent and realised with geometric accuracy. In between these two career points Magritte embraced a number of different styles, becoming a Cubist after a brief flirtation with Dada, but when he came under the influence of Giorgio de Chirico Magritte said "He was my spark". De Chirico presented a world of deserted townscapes in which human habitation is only hinted at by the use of shadows. From now on Magritte's objects would have a sense of dislocation, existing side by side but not in relation to each other, dissolving the illusion of space and the modelling of form. The author uses the concept of aphasia as a model for mapping the theories of Roman Jakobson in Magritte's later work. Windows and frames are recurring motifs, with dislocated machine-like body parts dominating in the late 1920s. The concept of pictorial negation ("this is not a pipe") belongs to the post-war period. The book concludes with five interviews, some in English, some in French, with people closely connected with Magritte's work. 8.5 x 11.25". 280pp, high quality colour reproductions.
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