Magritte
A Life
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2.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The first major biography of the pathbreaking, perpetually influential surrealist artist and iconoclast whose inspiration can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé—by the celebrated biographer of Cézanne and Braque
In this thought-provoking life of René Magritte (1898-1967), Alex Danchev makes a compelling case for Magritte as the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world. Magritte’s surreal sensibility, deadpan melodrama, and fine-tuned outrageousness have become an inescapable part of our visual landscape, through such legendary works as The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) and his celebrated iterations of Man in a Bowler Hat.
Danchev explores the path of this highly unconventional artist from his middle-class Belgian beginnings to the years during which he led a small, brilliant band of surrealists (and famously clashed with André Breton) to his first major retrospective, which traveled to the United States in 1965 and gave rise to his international reputation.
Using 50 color images and more than 160 black-and-white illustrations, Danchev delves deeply into Magritte’s artistic development and the profound questions he raised in his work about the very nature of authenticity. This is a vital biography for our time that plumbs the mystery of an iconoclast whose influence can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this monumental biography of the inimitable surrealist artist, the late British biographer Danchev (Cézanne) provides a fascinating study of a man whose "stunning imagination ha revolutionized what we see and how we understand." Following Danchev's death in 2016, art historian and Magritte scholar Whitfield picked up where he left off, using his "impressive archive of material" to vividly capture the last two decades of the life of Belgian artist René Magritte (1898–1967). The combined efforts yield an exhaustive look at the painter's unusual life, covering everything from the suicide of his mother when Magritte was 13 (which the artist didn't speak of for nearly 30 years) to his predilection for pornography, his relationship with his wife and model Georgette Berger, and his interactions with contemporaries, notably French writer André Breton, the 1920s' "Pope of Surrealism." By the 1960s, the famously "conventional" Belgian's subversive paintings—which, Danchev writes, were always imbued with "a pinch of eroticism" and "a sizzle of dread"—achieved worldwide fame. "Contemporary life is replete with Magritte and his sensibility," Danchev writes, noting that even the Apple corporate logo draws upon Magritte's 1964 painting The Son of Man. The result is sure to be the definitive account of the extraordinary artist's life.
