CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 5/19/2018

After the confusion and panic… Magritte's late vache paintings and 'sunlit Surrealism'

"The painting of my 'sunlit period' is obviously in contradiction to many things we were convinced of before 1940," René Magritte wrote to fellow Surrealist André Breton. "This, I think, is the main explanation of the resistance it has met with. I believe however that we no longer exist to prophesy (our prophesies were always unpleasant, it must be admitted); at the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris visitors had to find their way around with electric torches. We had this experience during the occupation and it wasn't funny. The confusion and panic that Surrealism wanted to create in order to bring everything into question were achieved much better by the Nazi idiots than by us, and there was no question of avoiding the consequences." This quotation and Seasickness (1948) are reproduced from René Magritte: The Fifth Season, published to accompany the major SFMOMA show opening today.