Magritte

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

“I am not an artist, I am a man who thinks.” This statement by
Belgian painter and sculptor René Magritte, placed across a large rock
that might also be the back of a man’s head, occupies the back cover
of this handsome exhibition catalogue from the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts.

The catalogue has a substantial text in the form of four long essays by
Didier Ottinger, the exhibition’s curator and the catalogue’s
general editor, and by artists Pierre Sterckx, Alain Cueff, and Bart
Verschaffel. The 1996 exhibition, the first in Canada to be devoted
solely to Magritte’s work, was organized (like the book) along
thematic rather than chronological lines.

Magritte’s Surrealism is in a class by itself. Indeed, Ottinger
rejects the label of Surrealism. His essay, “The Spiritual Exercises
of René Magritte,” describes the Belgian’s art as obstinately
fleeing “the dark caverns of the subconscious in which the murky
inspiration of official Surrealism was born. His work yearns to blossom
in full light.” Nevertheless, these works pose the surprising
juxtapositions and startling relationships that many of us associate
with Surrealism and with the Theatre of the Absurd. The titles for the
works are often conundrums.

Included in the book is a 16-page chronology that traces Magritte’s
life from his 1898 birth to his 1967 death, a list of major exhibitions
held during his lifetime, quotations from his letters, and comments by
curators and critics. Illustrations of all exhibited works, in color and
in black and white, and many additional works by the artist complete
this comprehensive presentation.