Page 25 - Studio International - February 1968

reaching elements in his art took place outside Italy; anxieties of the kind engendered in young children by
specifically in Paris, where the different strands of Dada the prospect of equally potent but mutually exclusive
met with various independent elements to combine, threats or temptations. Their bland surfaces mock our
under the generalship of Andre Breton, in the emergence confusion. Serene, formally complete, low in key,
of Surrealism. The Dada lineage of Surrealism was best Magritte's images leave us vacillating in a state of ever­
illustrated in the Turin exhibition by a group of Ernst increasing indecision. The subject-matter of the picture
collages of 1919-20 and a pair of extraordinary assem­ is our anxiety. The lesson learned and then taught by the
blages by Picabia from about the same date, one of Surrealists was that the appearance of a painting is not
which looked like a Californian landscape by Hockney. necessarily its subject, is not what it is about. Those
Ernst represents perhaps better than any other artist dreams and contradictions are there to evoke a response
the scope and variousness of Surrealism; his early work from us, and only when the response is made does the
has a beauty, an inventiveness and an edge which are painting come alive. 'Press this button', it says, and out of
breathtaking. But for sustained quality right through curiosity we obey, thus activating the gun which, from
into the post-war period, Magritte was the revelation of behind the curtain of our conscious mind, points at us.
this exhibition. His earliest work has a simplicity of If a direct line of de cent can be drawn from Chirico
means and a lingering complexity of effect which is be­ through Surrealism, it is with Magritte that it reaches its
wildering. At the other extreme, a large painting of 1955 sharpest point. D
showed complete control in the handling of an extremely * The 'Young Girl's Diary', published anonymously with a
complex image, investing an irrational pictorial idea foreword by Freud, appeared LO offer a compelling vindication
with the appearance of rational, almost rigid, formal of his theories. It has even been attributed, erroneously, to
balance. The finest of Magritte's paintings create in us Freud himself.

Left
Rene Magritte The walks of Euclid 1955
oil on canvas 64 x 51½ in.
Col I. Alexandre lolas, Paris
Above
Rene Magritte Untitled c. 1925 collage on paper
15 x 21¼ in. Private coll., Turin
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