'L'Usage de la Parole' ("The Use of Words", 1928). Translation: "The piano". - "The violet".
René Magritte was a world famous and influential Belgian Surrealist painter. Throughout his career, he made many works featuring absurd scenes, several of which have become iconic. They often feature average citizens in bowler hats, unfazed by the illogical situations they find themselves in. Some of Magritte's canvases are metafictional in nature, such as his iconic 'La Trahison des Images' (1929), also known by its caption "Ceci N'est Pas Une Pipe" ("This Is Not A Pipe"). His simple, strange but striking mysterious images provided him with enduring global popularity. Likewise, his work has become a symbol of the surreality of Belgium itself. Lesser known is that Magritte was also intrigued by the connection between language and imagery, a subject he both wrote and painted about. His visual essay 'Les Mots et Les Images' (1929) explains his theories in comic strip style. Some of his paintings use sequences, like 'L' Homme Au Journal' ("The Man With The Newspaper", 1928). Others present images in panels, with mismatched descriptions underneath them. They make him a notable, if unusual, pioneer of Belgian comics. Together with Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, he is one of three major Surrealist painters who once made comics.
Life and career
René François Ghislain Magritte was born in 1898 in Lessines, Hainaut (Henegouwen) as the son of a textile merchant who'd married a hat maker. In 1900, the Magritte family moved to Gilly in the same province, where Rene's brothers Raymond and Paul were born. Four years later, they again relocated, this time to Châtelet, where his father eventually became Inspector General of the De Bruyn oil and margarine company. By 1910, René Magritte had his first drawing and painting lessons from Félicien Defoin in a studio above a confectioner's shop. Tragedy struck in February 1912, when Magritte was 13. His mother drowned herself in the river Sambre in Châtelet. Her corpse was only found two and a half weeks later. Many books and articles have claimed that young René saw her dead body being dragged out of the water, with her dress draped across her face. However, there has never surfaced any concrete proof that he effectively witnessed this event. Either way, her suicide understandably traumatized him. In many of his paintings, people often have draped faces, like in his series 'Les Amants' ("The Lovers", 1928). Particularly haunting is 'Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire' ("The Musings of a Solitary Wanderer", 1926) in which a man stands next to a river, while a nude body floats vertically in the air behind him. Curtains are another recurring theme, either revealing or covering the hidden (un)reality of a scene. Magritte recalled that, as a child "(…) I grew able to look at a landscape as though it were but a curtain hanging in front of me. I had become skeptical of the dimension in depth of a countryside scene, of the remoteness of the line of the horizon."
'Les Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire' ("Musings Of A Solitary Wanderer", 1926).
In 1913, Magritte's father and the rest of the family moved to Charleroi. Between 1916 and 1918, Magritte studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. Another student at the academy was Paul Delvaux, who later became another internationally celebrated Belgian Surrealist painter. In Brussels, Magritte originally worked as a wallpaper, poster and advertisement designer, while painting in his spare time. Following the then revolutionary artforms of the day, he went through an impressionist, futurist, cubist and symbolist phase. He cited his fellow countryman William Degouve de Nuncques, a Symbolist painter, as an early inspiration. But it wasn't until Magritte discovered Giorgio De Chirico's art, and particularly his 1914 painting 'The Song of Love', that he decided to become a Surrealist and joined the Brussels branch of the movement, consisting of Camille Goemans, Marcel Lecomte, Paul Nougé and E.L.T. Mesens. They published their own Surrealist magazine Correspondance (1924-1925), to which Magritte often contributed drawings. In 1927, Magritte moved to the Paris region for three years, settling in the suburb Le Perreux-sur-Marne. He befriended André Breton, founder of the Surrealist Movement, which helped his work be taken more seriously in art circles.
Advertising art by René Magritte.
Nevertheless, it took until the mid-1930s before Magritte could fully focus on his career as a painter. The Belgian playwright Claude Spaak paid him a monthly stipend, giving him financial stability. Magritte now had the luxury to only pick out the advertising art commissions that pleased him. Together with his brother Paul, he set up an advertising agency, Studio Dongo, making film posters, music sheet covers and ads for Belga cigarettes, Neuhaus chocolates and Luxor distillery. Between 1934 and 1937, he designed film posters for the German sound-film distributor Tobis Klangfilm. For his commercial work, Magritte often used the pseudonym Emair (a phonetic transcription of his initials M.R.).
By 1936, Magritte's art was first exhibited in New York and in 1938 in London. In the 1940s, he suddenly changed from a realistic graphic style to a more loose, impressionist one. A typical example would be 'La Famine' ("The Hunger", 1948), in which a group of carnivalesque characters with sardonic smiles nibble at each other's faces. But as his international fame grew, Magritte soon settled on his familiar style again. In the post-World War II years, Magritte even earned extra income by forging artworks by Georges Braque, Giorgio De Chirico and Pablo Picasso. As a master of illusions, this task was understandably right up his sleeve.
Over time, his work received more critical acclaim and was exhibited in many of the world's most prestigious galleries and museums. The artist also received more lucrative commissions. In 1953, he made a large wall painting for a circular room in the Casino of Knokke, titled 'Le Domaine Enchanté' ("The Enchanted Domain"). To transpose his canvases to the walls, Magritte received assistance from Raoul Servais, who later became a famous animated film director.
In 1967, René Magritte died in Schaerbeek, Brussels, from pancreatic cancer. He was 68 years old.
'Le Trahison des Images' ("The Treachery of Images", 1929). Translation: "This is not a pipe."
Style
Like all artists within the Surrealist Movement, Magritte made works following his own stream of consciousness, inspired by dreams. In dreams, people often find themselves in abnormal situations which nevertheless look convincing. Surrealists mimic this seemingly normal atmosphere by drawing in a realistic style. Ordinary things are brought together in unusual combinations, often leading to an unsettling effect. The original Surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s were strongly influenced by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories about dream interpretation, particularly the symbolism of the subconscious. Later, Carl Gustav Jung explored these themes even further. Both Freud and Jung felt that dreams reveal people's inner personality and obsessions, particularly regarding fear and sexuality. In that sense, Surrealist art provides commentary on the human psyche.
'La Reproduction Interdite' ("The Forbidden Reproduction", 1937).
Some of Magritte's paintings are comparable to optical illusions, like a house simultaneously shown in sunny daylight and at nightfall ('L'Empire des Lumières', ["The Empire of Lights"], 1954) or a man looking at his backwards reflection in a mirror ('La Reproduction Interdite', ["The Forbidden Reproduction", 1937). 'La Condition Humaine' ("The Human Condition", 1933) shows a painting in front of a window, representing the exact same landscape covered by the painting. Other canvases feel more like mirages. In Magritte's world, shoes have human feet ('Le Modele Rouge', ["The Red Model"], 1935), miniature trains drive through fireplaces ('La Durée Poignardée', ["Time Transfixed"], 1938) and female horse drivers shift through forest trees ('Le Blanc-Seing' ["The Blank Check"], 1965). Magritte recalled that, even as a child, he sometimes felt anxious at night: "Now I know it signifies a sense of mystery, of the unknown. I want to show reality in such a way that it evokes this mystery because it is the only thing that doesn't change." Indeed, by placing normal things in odd juxtapositions, the viewer starts to look at them in a different way.
Magritte often gave his work non-indicative titles. 'L'Art de la Conversation IV' ("The Art of Conversation IV", 1950), for instance, shows a group of stone blocks on top of each other, while 'Le Prêtre Marié' ("The Married Priest", 1960), depicts two apples with eye masks. Some titles refer to famous books, like Goethe's 'Elective Affinities' (1933) and Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Domain of Arnheim' (1938), but have otherwise nothing to do with them. Even when Magritte presented the viewer with a seemingly straightforward image, like a pipe or an apple, he informed them that these painted images aren't a "real" pipe or an apple.
'Golconda' (1953).
The mundanity of everyday life inspired Magritte to many of his most striking paintings. He picked out simple objects, locations and characters, like average citizens in bowler hats and coats, and put them in an absurd context. They may appear in the presence of three moons in the sky ('Les Mystères de l'Horizon', ["The Mysteries of the Horizon"], 1955), with a floating apple in front of their head ('Le Fils de L'Homme', ["The Son of Man"], 1964) or rain down from the sky ('Golconda', 1953). Yet no matter where they are, they are unfazed by all the madness. Art critics have often interpreted Magritte's work as commentary on the monotony of life, or criticism on how average people never take time to marvel at the wonders of their existence. In reality, Magritte didn't want to stand out from the crowd. Some of the bowler men in his work are self-portraits, just like female characters are often portraits of his wife, Georgette. However, he avoided making their faces too specific. Unlike many artists, Magritte didn't cultivate himself as an eccentric outsider either, but dressed and behaved as an average citizen, living in an ordinary, middle-class neighborhood. His paintings weren't made in a fancy studio, but simply in his living room, close to the stove. This mundane environment inspired him far more than an unusual location might.
Anti-Rex poster by René Magritte. Translation: "The true face of Rex". The leader of the Belgian fascist party, Léon Degrelle, sees Adolf Hitler in his mirror.
It can be debated how "average" Magritte was. He once referred to himself as a "secret agent", since he made bizarre art and very left-leaning political posters, all within the modesty of his quiet bourgeois town. He was a member of the Belgian Communist Party, already warning people of the far-right party Rex in the 1930s, by making anti-fascist posters. At the same time, he was very critical of Soviet Russia, particularly Stalinism, making him sometimes distance himself from the Communists for years. Above all, Magritte preferred to keep his private life to himself. He rarely gave interviews and rejected any analytical interpretation of his work, only adding to the mystery of his art.
'La Lampe Philosophique' ("The Philosophical Lamp", 1936).
The Belgitude of Magritte
Belgium has produced many well-known, important and influential artists over the centuries, even before the country gained independence in 1830. Out of all, René Magritte is arguably the most famous internationally. He achieved this status not purely on the merits of his art, but also because it personifies the surrealness of Belgium itself. Above or beyond the language border, the casual traveller can find himself in landscapes that look very similar, but where everybody might suddenly speak Dutch, French or German. In the capital of Brussels, some even speak a mixture of both Dutch and French. In certain towns and cities, all signs and street names are required to be presented in both languages. This sometimes leads to bizarre and occasionally unnecessary redundant translations, repeating words that are the same in both languages. Other times, people look for specific locations, but can't find them, because they overlook the Dutch name instead of the French one, or vice versa. In Magritte's art, there is the same paradoxical clash between familiarity and oddness. Not just in his surreal juxtapositions of images, but also in his use of non-indicative titles and descriptions. His paintings often appear to have the wrong title, almost like a bad translation or a confused reader misinterpreting the text.
Another element that makes Magritte's home country surreal is Belgium's notoriously convoluted bureaucratic structure. The government is divided and subdivided in over seven parliaments, all based on language, community or region. Some can vote over each other's affairs, but not the other way around. Many journalists, politicologists or just plain critics have sometimes paraphrased Magritte's most famous painting to declare: "Ceci n'est pas un pays" ("This is not a country"). These matters have often led to national crises that topple governments and divide politicians. Yet the real strangeness is that none of all this actually has any dramatic effect on the everyday state of affairs. Average citizens just carry on as usual. As bizarre as Belgian politics, architecture and bureaucracy may be, they are also utterly fascinating, even funny, making Belgium unique. In Magritte's paintings, characters also go along their own business, without questioning their odd environment.
'Le Viol' ("The Rape", 1945).
Magritte also shared his fellow citizens' love for silly comedy. Compared with other Surrealists, his work has a far more lightweight, humorous tone. Some of his paintings almost look like cartoons. In 'L'Invention Collective' ("The Collective Invention", 1934), there is a mermaid, though with a fish upper half and human legs, instead of the other way around. In 'La Clairvoyance' ("The Prophecy", 1936), Magritte depicted himself staring at an egg, while painting a bird on a canvas. In 'La Lampe Philosophique' ("The Philosophical Lamp") from the same year, a man's nose is stuck inside his own pipe. 'Le Viol' ("The Rape", 1945) depicts a woman whose face is a female body, with her breasts being eyes and her vagina lips. In 'La Légende Dorée' ("The Golden Legend", 1958), a bunch of baguettes fly past a window. It comes to no surprise that many Belgian comic artists have cited Magritte as a strong influence on their own zany humor.
'La Clef des Songes' ("The Key to Dreams", 1930). Translation: "The Acacia", "The Moon", "The Snow", "The Ceiling", "The Storm" and "The Desert".
Comics-related artwork
As a child, Magritte mostly read adventure novels, but also the comic series 'Les Pieds Nickelés' by the Frenchman Louis Forton. In his work, he often used language in the form of descriptions underneath the images. Some of his canvases are divided in panels, making them comparable to picture stories, like 'Les Six Éléments' ("The Six Elements", 1928) and 'Le Masque Vide' ("The Empty Mask", 1928). Both paintings feature six unrelated images presented as a crookedly framed painting-within-a-painting. In 'L'Idée-Fixe' ("The Fixed Idea", 1928), there are four panels, depicting respectively a forest, the sky, a series of windows and a hunter with a gun in front of a wall. In another four-panel drawing, 'Le Musée d'Une Nuit' ("The Night Museum", 1927), a disembodied hand, apple, one geometrical shape and an image of several geometrical shapes are shown together.
'La Clef des Songes' (1927). Translation: "The sky", "the bird", "the table" and "the sponge".
Magritte was very interested in language and image and how they are intertwined. People use words to describe what they see, while using drawings or photos to visualize what they can't explain in words. Magritte demonstrated this phenomenon in paintings like 'L'Arbre de la Connaissance' ("The Tree of Knowledge", 1928), 'Le Miroir Vivant' ("The Living Mirror", 1928) and particularly in his 'Le Sens Propre' ("The Proper Meaning", 1929) series. In each of these paintings, the viewer simply sees a series of handwritten words and short sentences, presented in round frames, slightly comparable to speech balloons. The words act as a surrogate for an image, making the viewer visualize what the words represent mentally. In 'L'Usage de la Parole' ("The Use of Words", 1928), two men actually use speech balloons, but their words don't quite match up in their conversation. One says "The piano", the other "The violet".
A word can't always quite grasp what it supposedly describes. Magritte played with the audience's expectations in the painting 'La Clef des Songes' ("The Key to Dreams", 1927), in which four images are shown divided in a four-panel comic strip-like lay-out. Each image is accompanied by a handwritten description underneath, but only his drawing of a sponge matches. A drawing of a handbag is described as "the heaven", a cork screw as "the bird" and a leaf as "the table". In a 1930 painting, also titled 'La Clef des Songes', none of the images in this six-panel canvas match up. An egg is named "the acacia", a lady shoe "the moon", a bowler hat "the snow", a candle "the ceiling", a glass "the storm" and a hammer "the desert." The viewer instantly tries to make connections to grasp why Magritte made these associations. In his iconic series, 'La Trahison des Images' ("The Betrayal of Images", 1929), the artist even defied straightforward description itself, since a picture of an apple or a pipe don't make the objects a "real" apple or pipe.
'Les Mots et Les Images' (1929).
In issue #12 of La Révolution Surréaliste, Magritte wrote a visual essay, 'Les Mots et Les Images' (1929) in which he explained his theories with hand-drawn pictures. Rather than just use a few illustrations to liven up his text, he took the unusual decision to present the reader with an explanatory drawing after each sentence. Some are pure drawings, others combine his doodle with a handwritten description within the image itself. Some are straightforward, like a two-panel image of a forest, with the word "forêt" ("forest") in the right panel. In others, he replaces a word with a visual representation, like drawing a sun instead of using a sun in the sentence "Le ... est caché par les nuages" ("The ... is hidden by the clouds"). Some of these doodles made use of comic strip staples like speech balloons and sequences. In others, he defied the nature of words by showing a man standing next to a picture of a horse and a real horse, who still calls both "a horse", despite the fact that they aren't exactly the same.
'L'Homme Au Journal' (1928).
The closest Magritte ever came to an actual narrative was the four-panel painting 'L'Homme Au Journal' ("The Man With the Newspaper", 1928), in which a mustached man is seen reading a newspaper in a room. The image itself was lifted from volume #2 of 'La Nouvelle Médication Naturelle, Traduit de l'Allemand' (F.E. Bilz, 1899), a French translation of a medical magazine, in which a similar engraving appeared. In Magritte's reproduction, the man is only seen in the first image, while the other three simply show the empty room. The simple but strange picture story has a disturbing undertone, leaving readers to wonder where the man has suddenly gone. Did he leave the room, vanish into thin air or pass away? There's no indication of time, so years may have passed between one and the same image. Another interpretation of this minimalistic comic is that Magritte pokes fun at the mundanity of everyday life. There is no great epic story, just a man reading his paper and then going away.
In February 1940, Magritte also made two drawings for Achille Chavée's story 'Le Sang', published in L'Invention Collective. They follow a text comic format.
Illustrations for 'Le Sang' (1940).
Recognition
In 1956, Magritte was awarded the Guggenheim International Award for Belgium by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in the USA. Posthumously, an asteroid was named after him in 1989 and later also a crater on the planet Mercury. In 1998, to celebrate what would have been the artist's 100th birthday, his face was depicted on the official 500 Belgian Franc banknote. A year later, his former home in Jette was refurbished as a museum. In 2005, when The Greatest Belgian election was held, Magritte was voted to the 9th place in the Walloon version ("Les Plus Grands Belges"), while ending on the 18th place in the Flemish version ("De Grootste Belg"). In 2009, the Magritte Museum opened its doors in Brussels. The market square of his birth town Lessines features a statue of Magritte. Another Magritte statue is located at the Saint-Roch roundabout in Châtelet, where the artist grew up.
Legacy and influence
René Magritte arguably remains the most famous and influential Belgian painter in the world. For general audiences, he is, along with Salvador Dalí, synonymous with Surrealism. Compared with other modern art movements, Surrealism has always been more popular among the masses, because life itself is quite absurd. Particularly Magritte's work has a very inviting, almost playful feel that made him beloved both among critics, art fans and general audiences. Magritte had an immeasurable impact on many painters, conceptual artists and cartoonists. In Belgium, he influenced painters Olivier Lamboray, Jan Verdoodt and comic artists Benoît, Kamagurka, Ever Meulen, Luc Morjaeu, Guy Peellaert, François Schuiten, Herr Seele and Steve (Steve Michiels). 'Tintin' creator Hergé owned a few Magritte paintings. In 1990, the Belgian anarchist filmmaker and comic writer Jan Bucquoy burned a watercolor painting by Magritte to make a statement against the commercialization in the art industry. In 2009, the duo of Marc Daniëls and Rik Dewulf made 'De Schilders van Jette/Les Peintres Magiques de Jette' (2009), a comic book about famous painters hailing from the town of Jette, including Magritte. The aforementioned Steve Michiels made a comic about Magritte for the collective book 'Bruss. 2: Brussels In Shorts' (Oogachtend, 2014). His grandparents only lived a few streets away from Magritte's home. Vincent Zabus and Thomas Campi made the biographical graphic novel 'Magritte. C'eci N'est Pas Une Biographie' (Lombard, 2016). The same year, a collective graphic novel was released, 'Magritte Vu Par...' (Actes Sur BD, Centre Pompidou, 2016), featuring the artistic interpretations of Magritte's life and oeuvre by six artists: David B., Gabriella Giandelli, Eric Lambé, François Olislaeger, Miroslav Sekuilic-Struja and Brecht Vandenbroucke. In 2022, Pieter De Poortere released the book 'Renée' (Nanuq, 2022), a look at Brussels using Magritte's work as a loose narrative thread.
'Le Fils d'Homme' ("The Son of Man", 1964).
Dutch comic artist Joost Veerkamp made 'Magritte - The Third Man' as a partial parody of Magritte's painting 'Les Mystères de l'Horizon' (1955) as well as Thompson and Thomson from Hergé's 'Tintin' comic. In Germany, Magritte is admired by painter Martin Kippenberger. In the United Kingdom, he inspired Glen Baxter, Anthony Browne, Anthony Earnshaw and Storm Thorgerson. In his version of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' (1988), Anthony Browne made a direct homage to Magritte's 'L'Homme Au Journal', visualizing the poem 'You're Old, Father William' in the same setting. Many of Thorgerson's album covers for bands like Pink Floyd, particularly 'Wish You Were Here', were inspired by Magritte art. The Beatles Paul McCartney and John Lennon were also fans of Magritte. When they gave graphic artist Peter Blake a list of names for consideration to be used on the collage cover for their 1967 album 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', Magritte was one of them, though he didn't make the final cut for unknown reasons. The Beatles also used a green apple as the logo of their music company Apple Corps, in reference to Magritte's 'Le Jeu de Mourre' (1966). Inspired by a photograph of the Magrittes by Lothar Wolleh, Paul Simon wrote the song 'René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War' (1983), which appears on the 'Hearts and Bones' album.
In Spain, Magritte has OPS and Luis Rey among his followers and in the Czech Republic, Jan Svankmajer. In the United States, he was an inspiration to John Baldessari, Terry Gilliam, Edward Gorey, Jasper Johns, Duane Michals, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. Another celebrity fan was film director David Lynch. The film poster of William Friedkin's 'The Exorcist' (1973) was inspired by Magritte's 'L'Empire des Lumières' ('The Empire of Light'). In 'Understanding Comics' (1993), Scott McCloud used Magritte's 'This Is Not A Pipe' to explain to readers about the difference between word and image.
René Magritte's name lives on in an annual film award, the Magritte Award. In 2025, the English-language Belgian mystery television series 'This Is Not A Murder Mystery', set in the 1930s, features a young René Magritte as protagonist, with Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst as secondary characters.
Self-portrait of Magritte in 'La Clairvoyance' ("The Foresight", 1936).