Magritte and His Inuence

in American Art & Popular Culture

Sherry Zerbest
April 2013
University of West Florida
Art History Independent Study
Dr. Barbara Larson
1
The inuence of Rene Magrittes Surrealist art over the decades since his death in 1967
and well into the 21st century has appeared in a vast array of media from painting to sculpture
to lm to advertising. Not only did he inuence the Pop Artists, Minimalists, Abstract
Expressionists and various lmmakers and photographers, his art has featured on book covers,
music albums, product advertisements, in lm and the inuence of his style has been compared
to the works of many contemporary artists such as Robert Gober, David Salle and Jeff Koons.
This paper will offer an overview of Magrittes inuence (mainly in America) across a
spectrum of artists and movements, although weighing heavily in Pop Art, while looking at his
roots as a Surrealist painter and includes several visual examples as they are imperative for
assisting in the overall thesis.
The particularly semiotic aspect of Magrittes work differentiates him from other
Surrealists of his time. His use of familiar and often gurative objects concisely and atly
painted and often mixed with words, make his work appealing for motifs, symbolism and
appropriated graphic representation. The simplistic yet mysterious quality and often witty
themes are all conducive to appropriation. Magrittes works have a unique ability of reaching
across the spectrum of art movements and communication, and indeed they have, since the
mid-20th century.
Magrittes presence and inuence in the American art scene, especially in New York, is
associated with increased commercial exposure in exhibitions and publications of his work
which also featured exclusives on the Surrealists European art shows. Critics however did not
give him much credence early on and it wasnt until the mid-50s that he reached a momentum
of popularity leading to an assimilation with the advent of Pop Art.
Magritte did not make a trip to the United States until late in life when there was
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a major retrospective of his work at New Yorks MOMA in 1965. The show launched a great
interest in his work in the 1960s and 70s although he had gained considerable exposure in the
press from previous smaller exhibitions outside of Manhattan. The late celebrity from the
MOMA retrospective came at a time that correlated with his illness and death just two years
later. Nevertheless, Magritte stayed active. He enjoyed New York and America with his wife
Georgette and little dog LouLou, making a trip to Texas to socialize with friend and patron
Dominique de Menil. One of his last activities as an artist was proong compositional specs for
sculptures which were not completed until after his death.
Three decades earlier, in 1936, Magrittes rst solo exhibition in America happened at the
Julien Levy Gallery in New York followed by inclusion at the MOMAs Fantastic Art, Dada and
Surrealism show the same year. He had a second exhibit at the Levy in 1938. The allure of
Magrittes style typied the seduction of Surrealisms mystique which fed art connoisseurs and
collectors latent and exotic whims. Although Magritte distanced himself from the orthodox
Surrealists, the esoteric aspects of the movement were evident in works such as La Gcheuse [The
Bungler], 1935 (Fig. 1) and the cover for the Minotaure no.10, 1937 (Fig. 2). For all of Magrittes
contention with Breton, dismissing the subconscious and symbolism in ones dreams, Magrittes
words seemed to concede some acknowledgement of the concept: "If the dream is a translation
of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream."
Magritte differed from his fellow Surrealists in that his approach was more about the
deliberate play of words and images than in tapping the subconscious and the dream state or
using the automatism technique pioneered by Andre Masson. He passionately rebuked the
device of the subconscious in his painting, insisting that he worked consciously and
deliberately. Art historian Suzi Gablik writes that, for Magritte, references to unconscious
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activity only satisfy the persistent habit of explanation. The world does not offer itself up like a
dream in sleep; nor are there waking dreams.
1
He discounted the veracity of psychoanalysis
and Freuds inuence and did not believe in the subconscious. Magrittes style of Surrealism
was unique for its use of conventional, even mundane objects atly painted and juxtaposed in a
curious and sometimes provocative construct. He approached his work with deliberate and
sober contemplation. Magritte was not interested in accidental effects, automaticism or other
typically Surrealist techniques, but in his own words, in an objective representation of objects -
so objective, in fact that his manner of representing them was deliberately prosaic.
2

Magrittes fellow Surrealists explored art through specic tenets of the Parisian
Surrealist Movement outlined by Andre Breton in the rst Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 in which
he states, Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express verbally, by
means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated
by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or
moral concern." Breton dened surrealism as "Pure psychic automatism.
Although Breton is credited with being the father of Surrealism, a term rst used by
French playwright Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903, it was Giorgio de Chiricos metaphysical art
in the early 20th century that set the stage for the development of Surrealist painting. It was the
inspiration from de Chiricos The Song of Love (Fig.3) which gave Magritte an artistic
breakthrough when he reportedly rst saw the work in 1922. Collocated with perspective and
spacial depth, the painting depicts an unlikely juxtaposition of familiar objects in an austere
landscape. The aura of the painting borders on melancholic dystopia and is said to have
brought Magritte to tears.
3
Perhaps it was in this moment that Magritte began to understand
how to tap out the well of his inner demons through imagery in a device that suited him. It
4
might also explain why he once said that he was trying to get away from it (art); he was not
known to be forthcoming in explaining his work but the provocative substance of his paintings,
even those constructed by appropriation, lets on a secret catharsis which he most often did not
openly share.
The aura of de Chiricos early work is one of mystery, intellect and puzzlement
conveying something seemingly unknowable or hidden. These thematic devices appealed to
Magrittes fascination with suspense and mystery. His personal manifesto was to create works
of art that made the viewer think about the relationship of the elements to one another in their
unconventional setting. Magritte explained, It is a union that suggests the essential mystery of
the world. Art for me is not an end in itself, but a means of evoking that mystery.
4

Despite Magrittes position on being associated with the orthodox Surrealists, he
nevertheless benetted from the interest in the movement, especially as it appealed to collectors
and emerging artists such as the Abstract Expressionists who were essentially experimenting
with another form of Surrealism. Thus it would seem that Surrealism, in some aspect or another,
is the subcutaneous artery of all art movements since its birth in the early 20th century and
metamorphosis in the mid-20th century. Its death with the passing of Breton and eventually
Dali, is debated by art scholars as the genre has thrived to the 21st century manifesting in new
hybrid works along the way, inspired by the orthodox manifest. Magrittes work, like that of
others including Johns, Rauschenberg and Lichtenstein crossed the threshold between
Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, helping to set the stage for Pop Arts full
impetus on American culture.
The main driving force of Magrittes inuence and exposure in America was largely due
to his professional relationship with art dealer Alexander Iolas who owned and curated the
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Hugo Gallery in New York which specialized in Surrealism as well as other galleries and
business connections throughout the country and Europe. His New York gallery represented
such artists as Max Ernst, Joseph Cornell and Arshile Gorky. In 1947, Iolas exhibited selected
works of Magritte from his Renoiresque or sunlight period of the mid 1940s an
experimental diversion by Magritte in his creative style to ward off what he felt were the
negative vibrations of the War in Europe. The American publics reception of this style was not
well received. Iolas encouraged Magritte to abandon the experiment and return to the pre-war
attributes of his earlier paintings which he correctly predicted would be far more popular, the
poetry of which would be much appreciated. Magritte agreed to do this but presciently noted
that his Renoiresque works would be revisited later and compared to his others works. History
shows that Iolas correctly appraised this genre of Magrittes work as it remains a substandard of
Magrittes oeuvre.
Iolas would go on to exhibit Magrittes work several times over the years, remaining an
avid supporter and friend until the artists death in 1967. During the same period, Magrittes
work was exhibited by the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York where he rst exhibited his Words
& Images series in 1954. His presence in California began in 1948 when William Copley opened
the Copley Gallery in Los Angeles, promoting Magritte and other Surrealists such as Man Ray,
Max Ernst and Joseph Cornell. Art historian Dickran Tashjian, in his essay titled Magrittes Last
Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America
5
notes that the pattern of dissemination was set, as
Magritte inltrated the United States beyond Manhattan eventually gaining national exposure
in diverse venues, from the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago to Gumps
department store in San Francisco; from museums and galleries from coast to coast and points
in between. Meanwhile, thanks to Iolas, Magrittes presence in New York remained strong.
6
Magrittes experience in advertising and graphic design manifested unmistakably in the
compositions of his paintings. His legendary The Treachery of Images (1928) series shows the
relationship between the meaning and dissociation of an image and its name, of which the most
well-known of the study, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) shows the French inscription
underneath a painting of a realistic smoking pipe. The March 1954 exhibition at the Sidney Janis
Gallery inuenced younger artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, along with many
other emerging artists of the time. Of his most well-known work in the series, Magritte said,
The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's
just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe," I'd have
been lying!
6
Toward the end of the 50s and by the middle of the 60s, Magrittes work became
increasingly identied with the emergence of Pop Art which was by then taking over in New
York, overtaking the post-war Abstract Expressionists. He had gained quite a bit of notoriety
and enjoyed some degree of commercial success before his death a short time later. The art
culture of the 1960s was deadpan, kitschy, sexy, supercial, reecting the celebrity and
materialism in America. There was an artistic interest in subject matter associated with the
media and consumerism things of transient value, external, unemotional which made the
movement controversial in the question of artistic integrity.
Magrittes particular style of Surrealism amalgamated forms of repetition, singular
motifs, words and image play, juxtaposing, illusional overlapping and seismic proportions of
oddly placed, everyday objects such as in Elective Afnities (1933), all of which attracted the
formulaic ideas of the Pop Artists. Warhol stated, Pop artists did images that anyone walking
down the street would recognize in a split secondcomics, picnic tables, mens pants,
7
celebrities, refrigerators, Coke bottles. Like Magritte, the Pop Artists often displaced materials
or objects into a different context, mixing them with typographic elements and unrelated
components to create a new narrative or to emphasize the primary image. Jasper Johns used
recurring ag and target motifs, typography and common objects such as targets. In a 1959
work titled False Start (Fig 4) Johns plays with dislocation by placing the names of colors on the
wrong corresponding color area within the painting. The work appears to celebrate diversity in
multicolor and unpredictable labels, reecting the progressive trends in America. Richard
Hamiltons 1956 Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (Fig. 5) uses the
same devices, juxtaposing words and everyday objects from photographs, arranged
incongruously to reinvent a message on popular culture.
Andy Warhols method of representing common consumer products in large format call
to Magrittes Personal Values (1952) (Fig. 6) in which ordinary personal effects such as a comb,
shaving brush, soap and drinking goblet are oversized and juxtaposed inside a normal sized
bedroom setting. Warhols Brillo Soap Pads (1969) and oversized print of the Campbell Soup Can
(1968) emphasize mass product consumption whereas Magrittes piece focuses attention on the
irony of great value placed on inexpensive and replaceable objects. Or, an alternative
interpretation might say that the oversize personal objects represent the emphasis placed on
vanity and pleasure while a mirror reects a largely empty room and an open window
epitomizing the eeting insignicance of such values. Much the same way Pop Art denotes
inane materialism. With The Listening Room (1956) (Fig. 7), Magritte uses a Surrealist theme of
discomfort, placing a fantastically large apple almost completely lling a room, leaving the
viewer with feelings of claustrophobia. Warhols uncomfortably large portraits like that of
Communist Chinese dictator Mao Tse Tung (Fig. 8) follows Magritte with the same encroachment
8
on spacial comfort. Art historian Suzi Gablik writes, "Magritte's paintings are a systematic
attempt to disrupt any dogmatic view of the physical world. By means of the interference of
conceptual paradox, he causes ordinary phenomena to inherit extraordinary and improbable
conclusions.
7
One of Warhols signature styles are his works with repetition and primary colors
like Marilyn Monroe, which seems endowed with Magrittes The Song of Love I (Le Chant
d'Amour) 1963 (Fig. 9).
Like other Pop Artists, Claes Oldenberg thought of his work as a social commentary on
popular American culture. He considers himself a Realist. His large scale sculptures such as
Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, Match Cover and Apple Core (Fig. 10) echo Magrittes
Personal Values (Fig. 5) and Listening Room (Fig. 7) where ordinary everyday objects are
colossally rendered in proportion to their surroundings in order to magnify or contrast their
perceived value or message. Oldenberg seems to have taken inspiration for oversize food
objects from Magritte when comparing such works as Memory of a Voyage (1952), The
Heartstrings (1960) and The Great Table (Fig. 11) to Oldenbergs Cake and Bottle of Notes.(Fig. 12).
Contemporary artist Jeff Koons, who like Warhol, Johns and others has collected Magritte, has
expounded on the supersize concept in the spirit of the Pop Artists and Magritte with rened
sculptures like Balloon Dog, Egg and Bunny balloon (Fig. 13) which summon Rosenquists murals
of supersize subjects painted in sheeny, lustrous color.
Critics have questioned the controversial use of everyday objects as art objects.
Sculptures like those of Oldenberg, Koons and others bring into question the meaning of art,
hearkening back to the fuss over Duchamps readymades sculptures. Can ordinary objects be
called true art and do they degrade the idea of monumental art? Contemporary artist
Damien Hirst has drawn re for his disturbing and controversial displays of preserved animal
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carcasses. A gutted cow, a dissected cow, a sheep in a tank here and a shark in a tank there. Add
to that a conceptually rotting cow head in a tank, feeding a y colony and youve got the spirit
of Surrealisms darkest nature at work. Even Magritte would be shocked, despite his own public
offerings of dissection in works like The Eternal Evidence (1930), Delusions of Grandeur (1948), and
The Drop of Water (1948) (Fig. 14).
Ironically, Magritte did not think much of the Pop Art movement nor give much regard
to being called a precursor, or a father of the movement. He once said, And Pop! Lets just say
that its not very serious, and that its probably not even art? Or perhaps poster art, advertising
art, a very temporary fashionable art. It is effective enough in the streets, I admit, on young
girls dresses.
9
Art historian Michael Draguet noted Magrittes tendency to isolate himself from
the movements of his time.

His association with the Pop Art movement by proxy of the mass art
press may be partly to blame (not withstanding misreadings of his work) for the common
assessment of his paintings as witty and parodic. However, Draguet points to a quote by
Magritte which seems to underlie serious personal notions, especially weighed against the
ippant nature of Pop Art: "Pop artists came to the mistaken conclusion that they must show
the poetry of today's world. That is where their error lies. They want to express today's world,
although it is just a transitory state, a fad; and poetry does not concern passing things. Poetry is
the feeling of the real, of what it has that is most permanent."
10
Magritte did not live long
enough to be able to reect later on the Pop Art movement as so many archons of its day can
now do. If he had, he might see the legacy of his work in America given its momentum because
of the very culture that Pop Art was born out of transitory and faddish as it might have been,
it has a permanent place in American cultural history and derivatives of it, in the work of artists
like Jeff Koons are alive and well in the 21st century.
10
Photographer Duane Michals spent time with Magritte in the 1965 after reading about
him in Harpers Bazaar magazine in an article by Suzi Gablik. Michals spent several days
photographing the artist. The Surrealistic photos of Magritte appeared in an article in Esquire
magazine in a promo for Magrittes upcoming MOMA retrospective.
11
Commenting on
Magrittes paintings, Michals found them consistently amazing because they contradicted my
assumptions about the logic of the world. Obviously affected by Magrittes work, Michals said
of his own work that he became freed...to reinvent photography from just documenting reality
to questioning the nature of reality.
12

Michels is known for his disturbing surreal imagery and for innovating the
photographic narrative, adding written text to his photos, in which a series of photos tell an
idea, much like a series of lms stills. Magritte's impact on Michals is evident in these
techniques in particular as they show a connection to Magritte's compositional style in works
such as Man Reading A Newspaper (1928), and The Interpretation of Dreams (Fig. 15). Magrittes
imprinting by De Chirico's incongruous juxtaposition of objects with sonorous titles called forth
in Magritte a sense that poetry was sublime over painting and he began to use words in pictures
in his Words & Images series study, comparing words and images as means of representation.
Words as an extension of the image enhance the enigma or wit of the visual and provides an
avenue for combining poetic essence and provisional narrative, especially where the image by
itself cannot say all. Artist Barbara Kruger uses the same methodology in her photographic
works using typographic narrative to convey powerful messages. (Fig. 16).
In addition to painting, sculpture and photography, another medium where Magrittes
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inuence has surfaced is in lm. In the early 1970s, award-winning Surrealist lmmaker David
Lynch was working on his rst full-length lm project called Eraserhead which he nished in
1975. The atmosphere in the black and white lm is a dystopian industrial landscape where the
main character Henry is a bourgeois worker in a black suit and tie, suffering from neurosis and
the anxiety of fatherhood and sexuality. It has been debated whether the lm is autobio-
graphical as during the time Lynch made the lm he was living in the ghetto of Philadelphia
struggling nancially, professionally and as an unexpected father who (probably) married too
young. Like the main character (and like Magritte), Lynch most often wears an unassuming
bourgeois suit. But instead of a bowler hat, Lynch wears his hair very unkempt, (similar to the
character in the lm but not quite as wild), which has become a trademark of the director.
Portions of Eraserhead deal with the characters sexuality and parenthood which
manifests as zygotic sperma in the shape of little wiggly white worms, one of which he keeps
hidden protectively in a little box in his cabinet. In another scene in the lm they begin
dropping from the air like sporadic rain. This motif is akin to Magrittes Meditation (Plate I)
painting in which lit candles crawl like (spermazoa) worms along a dark landscape searching
for enlightenment. These sexual motifs also appear in Magrittes Philosopher's Lamp (Plate I)
opposite an intellectual (who looks like Breton) who exhibits a pseudo erectile dysfunction in
his phallic nose while his seminal illumination (Freudian?) snakes down the table leg
Breton was Magrittes philosophical enemy. Again, in The Imaginative Faculty (Plate I) (1936), a
candle and eggs are situated to reference the male reproductive set. A scene in the lm where
Henrys head is overtaken by the head of his zygote shrunken inside his suit conjures feelings
of helplessness, isolation and not ones self. This scenes counterpart we can nd in Magrittes
Pilgrim in which the head is removed from the body and oats beside it. (Plate I)
12
Magritte-esque imagery also appears in Lynchs iconic murder mystery series Twin
Peaks from the late 1980s. Recurring thematic elements from Magritte paintings appear such as
red curtains, bourgeois main character in black suit and tie, oating man, Greek statue-like
female torsos, rooms with open doors, forests/wood, dark rooms/gures/landscapes. (Plate I).
Other elements such as a character named The Log Lady (who cradles a wooden log in her arms
wherever she goes and recites psychic premonitions) recalls Magrittes Discovery, a female nude
whose body has patches of woodgrain morphing on her skin. The wood motif played heavily in
Magrittes repertoire of imagery and appears in several of his works. In The Prince of Objects
(1927) Magritte has painted a mirror which shows woodgrain showing underneath where the
glass has been partially wiped away. David Sylvester suggests
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that Magritte is proposing a
visual paradox (akin to a dream inside of a dream) in which the image we see of the mirror (as a
painting) reveals itself to be held up by the wall it is hanging on, thus the woodgrain, and thus
we are not looking at a mirror but in reality only a picture of a mirror.
A device which Lynch uses in his lms deals with the idea of transition between dream
and reality using doors as a motif. Several of Magrittes works use both doors and windows as
transitional devices. Art historian Sarah Whiteld discussing Magrittes La Rponse Imprvue
(1933) writes that the paradox of the open and closed door describes the act of concealing and
revealing. The opening suggested itself as a solution to the problem of the door, as the
door is an opening, and its purpose is to provide passage, access to what lies beyond.
14

In his Twin Peaks series Lynch uses an open door in an empty room (Plate I) to signify
transition to an ethereal state in the mind of his main character Laura Palmer. He also uses this
technique in his brilliant psychological thriller, Mullholland Drive, (arguably Lynchs magnum
opus), to signify a transition between dream and reality inside of a dream sequence which
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signies the main characters delusional state. In his follow-up prequel to Twin Peaks, (Fire Walk
with Me), Lynch uses this metaphor with a window for his narrative to reveal the main
characters use of substitute reality to protect her mind from acknowledging that her rapist and
seducer is her own father. Instead of him, its Bob, the stranger that crawls through her
window at night to have his way with her.
Alfred Hitchcock knew of the Surrealists, especially Dali and was born around the same
time as Magritte. Like Magritte, not only did the director often times wear a bowler hat and don
a bourgeois suit, he loved mystery and suspense and is most well-known for two particularly
successful lms in the genre, Psycho and The Birds, which he made in the late 50s and early 60s.
The 1950s was especially an active time in Hollywood for the horror and science ction genre.
Films like Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and the The
Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) thrilled audiences. 1958s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was also a
big hit. Amusingly, Magrittes 1929 painting The Giantess seems to anticipate the
future lm. In 1945 Hitchcock came into tangible contact with the Surrealists when he directed
the movie Spellbound which explored psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence designed
by Salvador Dal.
15
In his 1960 lm The Birds, he is said to have paid discreet homage to
Magrittan framing which is a reference to his using Magrittes style of cropping such as that
seen in his Georgette Magritte painting The Eternal Evidence (1930). The painted nude is
compartmentalized in closeup segments of the body, mimicking lm sequence. It was this
cropping effect, and especially the closeups (which invents a sense of tension) something
Hitchcock is known for which impressed the famous director.
10
Author Robert Short explains,
In all sorts of ways, Magrittes dislocations of everyday reality matched the cinemas repertory
of special effects.
16
Likewise, it would appear that seminal lmmakers David Lynch and
14
Alfred Hitchcock have matched the Surrealists (especially Magrittes) repertory of paradoxical
abstraction.

Magrittes bird motifs in many of his paintings such as Le Principle, Deep Water,
Young Girl Eating A Bird (The Pleasure) and Black Magic (Plate II) nd their counterpart when
juxtaposed with Hitchcock lm promos (Plate II). If Hitchcock admired Magrittes framing, he
may very well have borrowed ideas for his lm promo shots as well.
From the mid-20th century there was a marked increase in appropriation among artists
because of commercialism, mass production and the prevalence of photography although
appropriation is nothing new and has been going on in art since about the dawn of time.
Pop Artist Roy Lichtensteins use of appropriation is found in his early comic book
styled renderings such as Drowning Girl (1963) which was adapted directly from a 1962 DC
Comics issue titled Run for Love!
17
Appropriation in the 21st century is especially tricky and controversial as we now live in
the age of Jean Baudrillards simulacrum and Walter Benjamins greatest fear: mechanical
reproduction. Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Rauschenberg and other artists were using existing
photography, (especially of celebrities and political gures), product advertisements and found
objects for sculpture, painting and collage. Johns did repeated compositions of the American
ag and created sculpture out of beer cans. They were inuenced by Magrittes use of everyday
random objects juxtaposed and displaced in order to convey an alternative meaning and a new
way of seeing the common and familiar. Art historian Sarah Whiteld put it succinctly, The
juxtaposition of opposing ideas is one of Magritte's most frequently used devices, with which he
paints mysterious images and creates new meanings.
18
Magritte has been staggeringly appropriated from around the early 1960s to the current 21st
century. He was especially hot in the 60s (and into the 1970s) when the MOMA in New York
15
created cultural buzz around his work following his rst major retrospective there in 1965 and
other exhibitions around the country including two large exhibitions, Rene Magritte in America
at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts in 1961 and The Vision of Rene Magritte in
Minneapolis in 1962. His paintings were commonly used to illustrate book reviews by the New
York Times and his work was featured in major magazines like Harpers Bazaar, Life and
Esquire as well as other smaller but ubiquitous publications.
In whole or in part, select imagery of his work has appeared in all areas of the media and
advertising including lm, print, fashion, toys, television, the music industry, culinary
establishments and product merchandising, just to name a few. (Plate III). What has happened is
a sort of evolutionary branding, a Magrittesque semiotic lexicon of bowler hats, green apples,
puffy-cloud blue skies, appropriated variations of the famous phrase this is not a pipe, black
umbrellas, raining men in black suits, etc.
Music album design is especially liberal with Magrittes imagery. Over 100+ albums
have been produced using direct images of the artists paintings or alterations of them. (Plate
III). The Beatles Apple label was inspired by Magrittes Le jeu de Mourre (The Game of Mora), 1966
(Plate III), according to Paul McCartney in an interview in The Telegraph. He explains that he and
Yoko Ono both like and own several Magrittes and that an art dealer friend dropped the
painting by one day and told him I really loved Magritte. We were discovering Magritte in the
sixties, just through magazines and things. And we just loved his sense of humor.
19

In an interview with Johan Ral in 1993 he said, ...this big green apple (painting), which
I still have now, became the inspiration for the logo. And then we decided to cut it in half for
the B-side!"
20
One suspicious offshoot of a Magrittesque style evolution is the long journey of a familiar
16
and beloved toy that started back in the early 1950s with a graphic design artist named George
Lerner. A New Yorker born in 1922, he grew up under the artistic inuence of Dada and
Surrealism. The Dadaists included humor and game creation in their art experimentation. In the
1940s George Lerner came up with an idea to create a toy in which body parts and accessories
such as eyes, nose, lips, hands and torso could be stuck into a real potato; the set also included
eyeglasses, a bowler hat and a pipe. (Plate III). By 1950, Mr. Lerner sold the idea to the Hasbro
toy company and Mr. Potato Head was born. Over the next 50 years, the toy would evolve,
shedding the real potato for a plastic one and modications to the accessories and body parts,
but it kept the bowler hat, nose and pipe and today the toy has become an icon in American pop
culture, its most famous appearance being in the feature lm Toy Story.
21
Magritte himself utilized appropriation. He once commented that he had only produced
about 100 ideas out of 1,000. This may very well be accurate when one considers many of his
works were based on literary and lm subjects.
Magritte was fascinated with the advent of the cinema and lm. He delighted in Edgar
Allen Poe, the Fantomas series of mystery and intrigue, the idea of puzzlement and irony as
well as edges of the macabre. He loved to confound the viewer of his art and described his work
by saying, "My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and,
indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does
that mean?' It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is
unknowable." Perhaps Magritte wanted the viewer to make his or her own interpretation, or to
challenge the viewer to decode the paintings hidden meaning and message, thus nding a
deeper satisfaction. On the one hand, it seems that Magritte playfully enjoyed the mystery that
17
his work elicited for patrons and yet at times appeared to be contradictory as he claimed his
paintings did not contain hidden symbolism.
He culled ideas from publications, writers and other artists such as de Chirico from
whose work Magritte shaped the denitive style of his own art. In a feature article for TATE,
writer Neil Matheson points to a few examples in which Magritte based his work on ideas
borrowed from existing compositions.
22
He compares Magrittes 1927 work, The Menaced
Assassin to a scene in Louis Feuillades 1913 lm Fantmas (Plate IV), a mystery series which
Magritte enjoyed as a child and carried into adulthood with a continuing fascination toward
mystery and intrigue. In the painting, Magritte works out an invention of his own narrative,
inspired by the lm. Matheson also posits that a 1943 work, The Return of the Flame by Magritte,
showing a masked Fantomas gure against a aming red background was copied by the artist
from an original cover of the rst novel in the commercially published Fantomas series.
In another work, Magritte borrows from FE Bilzs health manual, The Natural Method of
Healing, Vol 2 (1898) to create, Man with a Newspaper, 1928 (Plate IV). In the painting, Magritte
has simplied and updated the elements but the composition is nearly exact to the original
drawing with the exception of the compartmentalized composition. All four panels are the
same except for a slight variation in perspective and the absence of the gure after the rst
panel. The work, which Tate London describes as disconcertingly deadpan, elicits a feeling
of quiet expectation as if, when viewing the subsequent panels, the viewer is expecting the
gure to return.
In a December 1965 TIME magazine article, (Paul Nouge Exhibitions: The Comedian & the
Straight Man), historian David Sylvester writes that Magrittes The Menaced Assassin (Plate IV)
was adapted from erotic and violent poems written by his close friend Paul Nouge in the
18
mid-1920s. Sylvester recounts some lines from the poetry which seem to be evident in
Magrittes visual interpretation:
In the background, at the level of the window sill,
Four heads stare at the murderer.
In the corridor on either side of the wide open door,
Two men are approaching unable as yet to discern the spectacle.
They are ugly customers. Crouching, they hug the wall.
One of them unfurls a huge net, the other brandishing a club.
All this will be called, "The Threatened Murderer."
In recent years, exhibits of Magrittes works have been held at the Tate in London and
Liverpool, and at the LACMA in Los Angeles. Contemporary artists like Robert Gober, David
Salle and John Baldasarri are among those who share a visual simpatico with Magrittes work.
Robert Gober, who grew up in the 60s and 70s was surrounded by Magritte imagery that
appeared on music albums and print posters. He recalled seeing a 1959 work by Magritte
23
of a
very large cigar and it must have stuck with him as years later he channeled the image into his
own creation, Cigar, 1991, a life size cigar of the same style as Magrittes earlier work. Gobers
afnity to Magritte also manifests in his leg and torso sculptures where he explores themes of
non-glamourous sexuality and fetishism.
24
Gobers Untitled (Leg), 1990 and Untitled (Torso), 1990
create a nexus with Magrittes Well of Truth, 1963 and Disguised Symbol, 1928 (Plate V). Both
artists interest in focusing on detached parts of the body and candles as phallic icons effectively
convey the naked truth about sexuality, banal functionality and mortality.
David Salles art shows an assimilation of Abstract Expressionist inuence with
Magrittan nuances of the artists Words and Images methodology most heavily seen in Salles
Coming and Going, 2009 and With All Due Respect Sir, We Need Modesty Blaise, 2009 (Plate VI).
He also nods to Magrittes Sheherazade, 1950 and Cheesehead, 1999 and The 4th, 1998 (Plate VI).
19
In June of 2012, Michael Heizers Levitated Mass (Plate V) opened to an anticipating
crowd at the LACMA in Los Angeles. The 340-ton granite megalith sculpture is based on a
concept drawing Heizer did in 1969 when he was doing earth artworks like Double Negative in
the Nevada landscape more than 40 years ago. In their online catalog, LACMA describes the
work as follows: Taken whole, Levitated Mass speaks to the expanse of art history, from
ancient traditions of creating artworks from megalithic stone, to modern forms of abstract
geometries and cutting-edge feats of engineering. Which seems to be what Magritte was
thinking when he painted Castle of the Pyrenees, 1959 (Plate V) in which an ancient castle fortress
sits atop a massive boulder, oating timelessly in the ethereal plane above the sea.
The examples of Magritte inuence are exhaustive and cannot possibly all be considered
here. But one thing is certain, having done around 1600 works in his comparatively shortened
life and career, Magritte left us with much to observe and dissect. Artists and historians like
David Sylvester, Abraham Hammacher, Duane Michals and Suzi Gablik have worked to build
a critical consensus for validating his work on par with Salvador Dali, Max Ernest and other
seminal artists of his day. In the meantime, Magritte can be enjoyed in daily life on a regular
basis, if you just keep an eye out for him.
Upcoming exhibitions of Magrrittes work include:
Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 19261938
September 28, 2013January 12, 2014
MOMA, New York
This exhibition is organized at The Museum of Modern Art by Anne Umland, The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller
Curator of Painting and Sculpture, with Danielle Johnson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and
Sculpture. The exhibition travels to The Menil Collection, Houston (February 14June 1, 2014), and The Art
Institute of Chicago (June 29October 12, 2014).
20
Notes:
1. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson, 1970; New York and London: Thames & Hudson,
1985; 1992.
2. Ibid.
3. Calvocoressi, Richard. Magritte. E.P. Dutton, New York, Phaidon Press Limited, 1979.
4. Glueck, Grace. "A Bottle Is a Bottle." The New York Times. (December 19, 1965.)
5. Tashjian, Dickran. Magrittes Last Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America. Magritte and
Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(November 15, 2006) p.29.
6. Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; First edition. 1979) p. 71.
7. Gablik, Suzi. Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson, 1970; New York and London: Thames & Hudson,
1985; 1992.
9. Draguet, Michael. The Treachery of Images: Keys for a Pop Reading of the Works of Magritte.
Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art
(November 15, 2006) p.81.
10. Ibid.
11. Tashjian, Dickran. Magrittes Last Laugh: A Surrealists Reception in America.Magritte and
Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. p.61
12. Ibid.
13. Sylvester, David . Catalogue Raisonn, vol. I (1992), nos. 183-187. Amsterdam University Press
(December 31, 2001)
14. Whiteld, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings and
Objects 1931-1948. London, 1993, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated p.209.
15. David Boyd, The Parted Eye: Spellbound and Psychoanalysis, Senses of Cinema,
http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/6/spellbound/, accessed April 2013.
16. Short, David. Magritte and the Cinema, NYU Press, Surrealism: Surrealist, 1997).
17. MOMA Learning, http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/lichtenstein-drowning-girl-1963,
accessed March 2013.
18. Whiteld, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings and
Objects 1931-1948. London, 1993, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated p.209.
19. David Jenkins, Paul McCartney Interview, The Telegraph, 26 May 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/7748956/Paul-McCartney-interview.html, accessed March 2013.
21
20. Matteson Art.com, Magritte and the Beatles, 2009, http://www.mattesonart.com/magritte-and-the-
beatles.aspx, accessed April 2013.
21. Wulffson, Don. Toys!: Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); 1st
edition 2000.
22. Matheson, Neil. Something borrowed, Something New, Ren Magritte I. Tate Etc. issue 22
(Summer 2011).
23. Karmel, Pepe. Who You Are and Where You Come from: Robert Gober and Rene Magritte. Magritte
and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art. p.163
24. Ibid.
22
Bibliography:
Barron, Stephanie; Draguet, Michel; Dickran Tashjian. Magritte and Contemporary Art: the Treachery of
Images. Ludion/Los Angeles County Museum of Art (November 15, 2006).
Calvocoressi, Richard. Magritte. E.P. Dutton, New York, Phaidon Press Limited, 1979.
David Boyd, The Parted Eye: Spellbound and Psychoanalysis, Senses of Cinema,
http://sensesofcinema.com/2000/6/spellbound/, accessed April 2013.
Duncan, Michael. The Art of Influence. Art in America. May 2007 Issue. (May 2007).
Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe.. Tr. James Harkness. Berkeley : University of California Press, c1983.
Gablik, Suzi. Magritte (World of Art). Thames & Hudson. (1985).
Hammacher, A.M. Magritte. Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. (1995).

Matheson, Neil. Something borrowed, Something New, Ren Magritte I. Tate Etc. issue 22
(Summer 2011).
Rothman, Roger. A Mysterious Modernism: Rene Magritte and Abstraction. Taylor & Francis.
Vol. 76, No. 4. (2007).
Rothman, Roger. Rene Magritte and The Shop-Window Quality of Things. Bucknell University. The Space
Between, Volume III:l. (2007).
Metzidakis, Stamos. Semiotic Intersections in Baudelaire and Magritte. L'Esprit Crateur, Volume 39, Number 1,
Spring 1999, pp. 71-83. (1999).
Short, David. Magritte and the Cinema, NYU Press, Surrealism: Surrealist, 1997.
Sylvester, David. Catalogue Raisonn, vol. I (1992), nos. 183-187. Amsterdam University Press
(December 31, 2001).
Sylvester, David. Magritte. Abrams. (1992).
Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; First edition. 1979.
Magritte, Rene; Torczyner, Harry; Miller, Richard. Magritte/Torczyner: Letters Between Friends. Harry N
Abrams. (1994).
Whitfield, Sarah & Raeburn, Michael. Ren Magritte. Catalogue Raisonn: Oil Paintings and
Objects 1931-1948. London, vol. II, no. 385, illustrated 1993.
Wulffson, Don. Toys!: Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. Henry Holt and Co. (BYR); 1st
edition 2000.
23
(Fig. 1) La Gcheuse
[The Bungler], 1935
(Fig. 2) Minotaure no.10, 1937
(Fig. 3) de Chirico - Song of Love
(Fig. 4) Jasper Johns - False Start
(Fig. 6) Magritte -Personal Values
(Fig. 7) Magritte -The Listening Room
Warhol - Campbell Soup Can
Warhol - Apple
(Fig. 8) Warhol - Mao (Tse Tung)
(Fig. 5) Richard Hamilton - Just What
Makes Todays homes so difernet, so
appealing?
(Fig. 9) Magritte -The Song
of Love I (Le Chant d'Amour)
Warhol - Marilyn Monroe
(Fig. 10) Oldenberg - Apple Core
Oldenberg - Match Stickls
(Fig. 12) Oldenberg - Bottle of Notes
Magritte -Memory of a Voyage
(Fig. 13) Jef Koons - Balloon Dog, Egg and Bunny balloon
Magritte -The Heartstrings (Fig. 11) Magritte -The Great Table
Oldenberg - Cake
Oldenberg Lipstick
(Fig. 6) Magritte -Personal Values
Magritte - The Eternal Evidence
Damien Hirst - Cow
Damien Hirst - dissection
Damien Hirst - Cow head
Magritte - Delusions of Grandeur Magritte - The Drop of Water
(Fig. 14)
Magritte - The Interpretation of Dreams
Michals - photo narrative
Michals - The Illuminated Man
Michals - A Man Dreaming in the City
Magritte - Pleasure Principle
Magritte - The Musings of the
Solitary Walker, 1926
Kruger - Your Gaze Hits the
Side of My Face
Kruger - Small World
Kruger - We Dont Need
Another Hero
Magritte - Man Reading A Newspaper
(Fig. 15)
(Fig. 16)
David Lynch and Magritte Plate I
Magritte David Lynch
David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still
David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still
David Lynch - Eraserhead Still
David Lynch - Eraserhead Still Magritte - The Pilgrim
Magritte - Golconda
Magritte - The Victory
Magritte - Night Owl
Magritte - Not To Be Reproduced
Magritte - The glass key
Magritte - Philosophers Lamp Magritte - Imaginative Faculty
Magritte - Meditation
David Lynch - Eraserhead Still
David Lynch - Eraserhead Still
David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still
David Lynch - Twin Peaks Still
David Lynch - Twin Peaks Promo
Alfred Hitchcock and Magritte
Plate II
Magritte
Magritte
Hitchcock
Magritte - Black Magic
Magritte - Le Principle Magritte - The Fanatics, 1955
Young Girl Eating A Bird
(The pleasure)
Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic
Magritte - Deep Water Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic
Hitchcock -
The Birds promo pic
Hitchcock - The Birds promo pic
Alfred Hitchcock - The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock
Plate III
Magritte - The Giantess
Channeling Magritte
Ad campaign
Music album design
Book Cover
Pop illustration
Consumer Products
Advertising
Magrittes Le jeu de Mourre (The Game of Mora)
Beatles Apple Label
George Lerner & Mr. Potato Head
Magrittes signature body parts
Toys
Magrittes Appropriation
Plate IV
Magritte - The Return of the Flame Original Fantmas Book Cover
Magritte - The Menaced Assasin Scene from Louis Feuillades 1913 flm Fantmas."
Magritte -Man with a Newspaper FE Bilzs Health Manual,
The Natural Method of Healing
Michael Heiser - Levitated Mass
Magritte -Castle of the Pyrenees
Magritte - The domain of Arnheim Ed Ruscha - Lion in Oil
Plate V
Magritte - Imaginative Faculty
Gober - Untitled (candle)
Gobers Untitled (Leg)
Magritte - Well of Truth Bronze
Gobers Untitled (Torso)
Magritte - Disguised Symbol
With All Due Respect Sir, We Need Modesty Blaise 2009
Coming and Going, David Salle 2009
Yellow Sail, 2010
Magritte
The 4th, 1998
Cheesehead, 1999. Oil and acrylic on canvas and linen. 60 x 120 inches.
Sheherazade
Magritte, 1950
Sheherazade
Magritte, 1950
Plate VI