Page 29 - Studio International - February 1969

André Breton & closely to one of surrealism's most cherished the primacy of automatism, laid down in the
preoccupations : the degree to which secret 1928 'Surrealism and Painting', in no un-
René Magritte affinities could be discovered between appar- certain terms (`Any form of expression in
which automatism does not at least advance
ently disparate objects (Lautréamont's dictum
`Beautiful as the chance encounter on an under cover runs a grave risk of moving out of
Simon Watson Taylor operating table of a sewing-machine and an the surrealist orbit', 'The great physico-
umbrella' had become the surrealists' most mental stream circulating within surrealism
often repeated mot d'ordre, along with Rim- continues to derive its impulse from auto-
Magritte's peinture-poésie may be considered to baud's `Je est un autre'). matism', etc.), and Breton approaches Mag-
have been adopted by the surrealists as sym- Yet in some ways Magritte remained a rather ritte somewhat warily. Here is the relevant
bolically typical in 1929, when La Revolution isolated figure among the painters attached paragraph : `. . . Magritte's approach, which
Surréaliste reproduced his painting in which a more or less formally to the movement. The far from being automatic was, on the con-
nude woman substitutes for the missing word others who had derived their initial inspira- trary, perfectly deliberate, offered support to
in the message Je ne vois pas la / cachée dans le tion mainly from Chirico (Ernst, Tanguy, surrealism from an entirely different direction.
forêt, and photographs of the members of the Dali) soon moved away from an objective Alone in adopting this particular method,
group, with their eyes closed, provide a frame. realism towards a more or less fantastic bio- Magritte approached painting as though it
It would certainly seem that the 'dream- morphism; and Magritte remained alone in constituted a series of "object-lessons", and
image' illusionism which Magritte inherited pursuing an unembellished, indeed prosaic, from this point of departure he has proceeded
directly from Chirico must correspond very imagery divorced from the technical and aes- to put the visual image systematically on
thetic experiments in which the other sur- trial, taking pleasure in stressing its lapses
realist painters were enthusiastically engaged. and in demonstrating the extent to which it
The poetic ideas which Magritte transformed
into visual statements (often incorporating
Familiar objects 1927 or 1928
words offering a violent contrast to the asso- oil on canvas 32 x 45⅝ in.
ciated image) were essentially ironic or para- Coll: E.L.T. Messens, Brussels
Photo: Paul Bijtebier, Brussels
doxical by nature, and so, in terms of both
2
poetry and painting, as far removed as pos- The man in the bowler hat 1964
sible from the automatism which was the oil on canvas 25 x 19 in.
Coll: Simone Withers Suran, New York
avowed cornerstone of surrealist philosophy. Photo: Galerie Alexandre bolas, Paris
André Breton's first reference to Magritte 3
occurs in his 1941 essay 'Artistic Genesis and Time Transfixed 1932
Watercolour and gouache 57¼ x 38½ in.
Perspective of Surrealism'. This text reasserts Courtesy Tate Gallery