One Surrealist a Day
because we all need to dream a little
The Palace of Curtains III by René Magritte, 1928-29. One of the reasons I do not post as much Magritte as I possibly could is because I find his work nearly impenetrable. Unlike Dalí, who I could analyze all day long, Magritte was operating in a completely different philosophical way that I often find enigmatic. Here’s one painting I think I finally “get” thanks in large part to this page which breaks down Magritte’s 18 illustrations from the Second Surrealist Manifesto. As you can see, Magritte shows two frames (a bit coffin shaped, I might add) side-by-side. In one is the image of a blue sky. In the other is the French word “ceil” which means “sky.” Magritte is showing us here that the word and the image are interchangeable in their meaning, but different in their execution. However it is in their execution that we find an interchangeable hierarchy of importance. Since we’re dealing with just a visual here, we can eliminate all of the other senses. (In fact, there is no other sense that experiences sky or printed words other than sight. Crafty Magritte, indeed.) The frame on the right gives us an arbitrary association to the subject: a word. When you think of the word “sky” your mind instantly fashions an image of what that might look like. Take a moment to think about that process. One segment from an arbitrary system of communication absorbed by the only process living things have to sense skies has the enormous power to conjure an image inside your brain that only you can see - your sky. The other frame works by resemblance, and thus is fundamentally flawed. As we have seen in The Treachery of Images, a painting is not the object it depicts. The sky in the frame is only a representation of a sky. Although the image of a sky is more universal than the word, and more precise, it is less creative. It is funny to think that it takes an artist to paint a sky yet the mere act of doing so saps the creativity out of it. In other words, the idea of sky is more powerful than the actual thing. The process I went through to write the above analysis highlights the fundamental difference, and difficulty that I find when analyzing Magritte in comparison to other artists. Dalí, and the artists like him, express the thoughts of their own mind and thus the analysis is always a one-way process. I, analyzer, absorb data, interpret, and then impose my findings upon the painting. With Magritte, through its starkness and lack of on-the-surface abstraction, the painting imposes itself upon me, and only then can I analyze and interpret. That’s a process that takes a while to get used to. Let me know how you think I have done.

The Palace of Curtains III by René Magritte, 1928-29.

One of the reasons I do not post as much Magritte as I possibly could is because I find his work nearly impenetrable. Unlike Dalí, who I could analyze all day long, Magritte was operating in a completely different philosophical way that I often find enigmatic.

Here’s one painting I think I finally “get” thanks in large part to this page which breaks down Magritte’s 18 illustrations from the Second Surrealist Manifesto.

As you can see, Magritte shows two frames (a bit coffin shaped, I might add) side-by-side. In one is the image of a blue sky. In the other is the French word “ceil” which means “sky.” Magritte is showing us here that the word and the image are interchangeable in their meaning, but different in their execution. However it is in their execution that we find an interchangeable hierarchy of importance.

Since we’re dealing with just a visual here, we can eliminate all of the other senses. (In fact, there is no other sense that experiences sky or printed words other than sight. Crafty Magritte, indeed.) The frame on the right gives us an arbitrary association to the subject: a word. When you think of the word “sky” your mind instantly fashions an image of what that might look like.

Take a moment to think about that process. One segment from an arbitrary system of communication absorbed by the only process living things have to sense skies has the enormous power to conjure an image inside your brain that only you can see - your sky.

The other frame works by resemblance, and thus is fundamentally flawed. As we have seen in The Treachery of Images, a painting is not the object it depicts. The sky in the frame is only a representation of a sky. Although the image of a sky is more universal than the word, and more precise, it is less creative. It is funny to think that it takes an artist to paint a sky yet the mere act of doing so saps the creativity out of it. In other words, the idea of sky is more powerful than the actual thing.

The process I went through to write the above analysis highlights the fundamental difference, and difficulty that I find when analyzing Magritte in comparison to other artists. Dalí, and the artists like him, express the thoughts of their own mind and thus the analysis is always a one-way process. I, analyzer, absorb data, interpret, and then impose my findings upon the painting. With Magritte, through its starkness and lack of on-the-surface abstraction, the painting imposes itself upon me, and only then can I analyze and interpret. That’s a process that takes a while to get used to. Let me know how you think I have done.

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