René Magritte (1898-1967) was one of the most intriguing painters associated with Surrealism, but he did not fully find his voice until after breaking ties with the movement. This book, the first to look exclusively at Magritte's late career, examines his most important bodies of work from the 1940s through the 1960s, and shows how they marked a fundamental shift in painting from Modernism to our own time.
Featuring more than sixty artworks, René Magritte: The Fifth Season explores how Magritte balanced irony and conviction, philosophy and fantasy, to illuminate the gaps between what we see and what we know. Subjects explored in this volume include the artist's Renoir period; the période vache, with its Fauvist- and Expressionist-style paintings that are little known to American audiences; the 'hypertrophy of objects' paintings, a series that plays with the scale of familiar objects; and the enigmatic Dominion of Light suite, paintings that suggest the simultaneous experience of day and night. Together, the works reveal Magritte as an artist acutely attuned to the paradoxes at work within reality, and an enduring champion of the role of mystery in life and art.
“Magritte balanced irony and conviction, philosophy and fantasy to illuminate the gaps between what is seen and what is known. The selected works on display reveal Magritte as an artist acutely attuned to the paradoxes at work within reality and an enduring champion of the role of mystery in life and art.”
The pleasures of humor, of mystery, of layers of semblance and concealment still operate in these works. -- Regina Marler The New York Review of Books
Magritte still has the power to surprise. -- Sophie Haigney The Economist
A revelatory exhibition. -- Caroline Goldstein Artnet
Magritte’s power rests in his unpretentiousness. Instead of saying “I see things that you don’t,” he says, “You’ve probably seen this, too, but maybe you haven’t noticed that you’ve seen it. -- Peter Plagens Wall Street Journal
[The paintings] reawaken age-old questions about what the senses apprehend, what awareness and reflection contribute, and how we know. -- Kenneth Baker Art Newspaper
Instead of seeing an old, familiar friend, whose best-known motifs (pipes that aren’t pipes, bowler hats and so on) have leaked into every aspect of popular culture, we are confronted with a man who seems to be undergoing a breakdown. -- Sebastian Smee Washington Post
A once-in-a-lifetime event. -- Jonathan Curiel SF Weekly
... a grand success on its own terms: a well chosen, carefully researched, beautifully designed reconsideration of an artist we thought we knew. -- Charles Desmarais SF Chronicle
Artinfo
Caitlin Haskell is the Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.Caitlin Haskell is the Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Magritte's extraordinary late paintings When Ren
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