A visual biography of our favorite Surrealist, the ever-witty Rene Magritte, as told in photographs
Heavily illustrated with 350 images, including photographs, paintings, drawings and film stills.
Truly brings Magritte the man as well as the artist to life in photographs of his family, friends, fellow-surrealists, and self-portraits.
Accompanies a traveling exhibition (US venue TBD) devoted to Magritte's photographs and films.
Magritte (French, 1898 - 1967) was one of the best known and most influential of the Surrealists.
His witty and images often depict ordinary objects in an unusual contexts.
PRESS & PROMO: SFMOMA will have an exhibition on Magritte's later work next year. Because the focus is on his photographs, it's a good companion book for any museum that has Magritte in their collection.
LUDION
René Magritte: The Revealing Image
Text by Xavier Canonne.
Scenes from the life and art of Magritte: a biography in pictures
While Surrealists such as Man Ray and Raoul Ubac made photography an essential part of their work, René Magritte remained committed to painting throughout his long career. But painting and photography were not mutually exclusive for him, and photography actually formed an important part of his oeuvre. Magritte built up a large photo and film archive throughout his life, although it was only discovered in the 1970s, more than 10 years after his death. Revealing a lesser-known side of the Surrealist master, these photographs give us access to an informal Magritte, from his childhood to the last years of his life.
In René Magritte: The Revealing Image, a comprehensive catalog of Magritte’s photography and film, we see Magritte with his parents and brothers, as a newly married man with his wife Georgette and with his contemporaries in the Brussels Surrealist group. Spontaneous snapshots are complemented by posed scenes, including improvised tableaus with his fellow artists, parodies of famous movies, portraits of Magritte at his easel and staged photographs that served as models for his paintings. Fans of Magritte’s iconic paintings will find much to discover here; images where the artist and his friends hide their faces or turn away from the camera particularly resonate with his investigation of the “hidden visible.”
Belgian Surrealist René Magritte (1898–1967) is best known for his cerebral paintings that explore the distance between object, language and image. Magritte’s careful, meticulous handling of form only makes his scenes more dreamlike; he once described painting as “the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced.”
Featured image is reproduced from 'René Magritte: The Revealing Image.'
Featured image—of Surrealist René Magritte imitating the pose of his lifelong hero, the French crime fiction character Fantômas, in his painting “The Barbarian” at London Gallery, London, 1938—is reproduced from René Magritte: The Revealing Image, Ludion’s comprehensive and truly ravishing catalog of the artist’s photography and film. This book is wonderful precisely because it is not a book of Surrealist art photographs, but rather a collection of 400 playful biographical images accompanied by an excellent text, in which Xavier Canonne tells the artist’s life story while illuminating the unique, related mechanics of his creative process. continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 11.5 in. / 272 pgs / 200 color / 200 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9789491819735 PUBLISHER: Ludion AVAILABLE: 9/26/2017 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA ASIA AU/NZ AFR ME
Scenes from the life and art of Magritte: a biography in pictures
While Surrealists such as Man Ray and Raoul Ubac made photography an essential part of their work, René Magritte remained committed to painting throughout his long career. But painting and photography were not mutually exclusive for him, and photography actually formed an important part of his oeuvre. Magritte built up a large photo and film archive throughout his life, although it was only discovered in the 1970s, more than 10 years after his death. Revealing a lesser-known side of the Surrealist master, these photographs give us access to an informal Magritte, from his childhood to the last years of his life.
In René Magritte: The Revealing Image, a comprehensive catalog of Magritte’s photography and film, we see Magritte with his parents and brothers, as a newly married man with his wife Georgette and with his contemporaries in the Brussels Surrealist group. Spontaneous snapshots are complemented by posed scenes, including improvised tableaus with his fellow artists, parodies of famous movies, portraits of Magritte at his easel and staged photographs that served as models for his paintings. Fans of Magritte’s iconic paintings will find much to discover here; images where the artist and his friends hide their faces or turn away from the camera particularly resonate with his investigation of the “hidden visible.”
Belgian Surrealist René Magritte (1898–1967) is best known for his cerebral paintings that explore the distance between object, language and image. Magritte’s careful, meticulous handling of form only makes his scenes more dreamlike; he once described painting as “the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced.”
