CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/6/2018

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.