JF Ptak Science Books Post 1111 [Part of the History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things series.]
Standard introductions to Magritte miss what I most see in his work–it seems to be in a constant state of removal, of emptying, and blankness. And this is the case even when the canvas is full of images, even when it is full of people, raining people–the underlying effect to me is still the same. The man just painted blank spaces in full color, some of the most colorful nothingness I’ve ever seen.
Many of Magritte’s strikingly delineated paintings suggest and portray missing things and emptiness with shadows and barren places, but even when they’re populated by human figures there’s a long memory of the same sort of thing: half torsos, bagged heads kissing, the backs of people facing a mirror in which their back is reflected, empty feet, half-humans, hidden faces, floating hats, draped bodies, the half-disappeared, and so on, all speak to the same emptiness.
Perhaps this sense is strongest in me when I see his Perspective: the Balcony of Manet (ca. 1945), especially side by side with the Edouard Manet The Balcony (1868). I know its unfair to compare the two–but Magritte started it–but Manet is hardly an empty, blank painter. Once Manet moves through the 1860's and into real modernity, he is able to paint colossal senses in the boundaries between objects, boundaries that are really mostly suggestions than demarcations.
(This Perspective is from a short series done by Magritte which replaced the subject of a great painting with a coffin. Another example is Jacques-Louis David's Madame Recamier and Magritte’s answer. David’s painting may have been about as avant-garde as Magritte’s, given the time and expectations of artists.)
Notes:
From Columbia Encyclopedia online: “Magritte, René 1898–1967, Belgian surrealist painter. Strongly influenced by Chirico, Magritte developed a style in which a misleading sort of realism is combined with mocking irony. His paintings are dominated by an intense quietude and restraint, despite a startling juxtaposition of images. Characteristic works, such as The Red Model (1935; Modern Mus., Stockholm), contain elaborate fantasies constructed around commonplace situations.”
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