![]() When he initially heard that the work was not coming on to the market, director Sjarel Ex said, ‘A collector has around thirty-five years, but we can wait five generations for a painting.’ Le miroir vivant is a major acquisition because it is illustrative of the research Magritte was engaged in in Paris in 1927-30. The attempt to acquire this specific painting by Magritte was captured in the documentary Conducting Boijmans by Sonia Herman Dolz in 2015. The museum had been trying to acquire an early word painting by Magritte for a long time. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen succeeded in buying Le miroir vivant in 2015. The ‘word paintings’ disrupt accepted conventions of language and make it possible to unlock new meanings. This painted reproduction of words evokes images for the viewer without seeing them on the canvas. The letters are ‘written’ in paint, in calligraphy. The work revolves around just four words or phrases, each placed inside a white cloud against a black background, which are connected to each other by a thin line: ‘personnage éclatant de rire’ (person roaring with laughter), ‘horizon’, ‘armoire’ (cupboard) and ‘cris d’oiseaux’ (birds’ cries). Le miroir vivant belongs in this category. In a subsequent stage of the ‘word paintings’, his painted objects or things from nature no longer feature. The mind is set free: the highest objective of the Surrealist movement is achieved. Breaking these conventions has an alienating effect. To Magritte, our use of language was subordinated to conventions. The sponge is labelled ‘L’éponge’ (the sponge): the only time that the painted object is named in a conventional, correct way. In four painted frames images are presented with a label: a handbag is labelled ‘Le ciel’ (the sky), a penknife is combined with the word ‘L’oiseau’ (the bird), a leaf has the addition of ‘La table’ (the table). In October 1927 Magritte made his first ‘word painting’, La clef des songes, in which the relationship between text and image plays the major role. Despite these difficult personal and professional circumstances, Magritte’s Parisian period, September 1927 to July 1930, was a productive and innovative phase in his life. His contacts with the Parisian galleries left a lot to be desired. Although Breton, Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard were interested in Magritte’s paintings and began to buy them for their art collections, the Belgian is not mentioned in Breton’s trail-blazing book Le surréalisme et la peinture (1928) nor in the Second Surrealist Manifesto, which was published in 1929. The couple went to live in Le Pereux-sur-Marne, a dreary suburb to the east of Paris. His first solo exhibition Exposition Magritte, which ran from 23 April to 5 May of that year in Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels, had been panned by the critics. The French capital, where André Breton’s Surrealism reigned supreme, offered Magritte potential new opportunities to make his work widely known. In September 1927 the Belgian artist René Magritte and his wife Georgette moved to Paris. 77Īuthor: Marijke Peyser René Magritte, 'La clef des songes' (The Interpretation of Dreams), 1927, oil on canvas, 38 x 53 cm. Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023)Ī dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van beuningenīrussels 1978, p. Surrealist Art - Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021)Ī Surreal Shock – Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021)Ī Surreal Shock. Highlights from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023) New York 1954 London 1966 Hanover/Zurich 1969 Edinburgh/Kongens Lyngby 1971 Bordeaux 1977 London 1978 Brussels/Paris 1978-79 Lausanne/Munich 1987-88 Rotterdam 1996a Brussels 1998 New York/Houston/Chicago 2013-14 Rotterdam 2015-16 Rotterdam 2017bĭalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism. Mesens, London 1932 private collection, Brussels 1967 Vedovi Gallery, Brussels 2015 Purchased with the support of Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rembrandt Association (including its Dura art fund and its dedicated sculpture fund), Mondriaan Fund, VSBfonds, Stichting Fonds Willem van Rede, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds (including its Breeman Talle Fund), VriendenLoterij and private individuals, 2015
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