Page 32 - Studio International - February 1969

Magritte's

breadth of vision.

André Breton

For centuries now mankind has contented it-
self with distinguishing two modes of cognition
(or faculties of thought), namely cognition of
relative reality through sensory perception and
cognition of absolute reality by means of abstract
thought serving the purposes of philosophy, art
and love. We are indebted to the philosopher
Constantin Brunner* for having at last, in our
times, established the inadequacy of this
method of approach which takes little account
of a third faculty, of fundamental importance
and necessity, that he christens ANALOG° N.
Brunner shows that this analogon, or fiction-
alism, which he defines as 'superstitious
thought' in the sense that it takes as object
`relativity converted into the absolute, in other
words the fictitious absolute' (governing re-
ligion, metaphysics and ethics), may com-
pound, as the third faculty of thought, with
either of the two others but never with both at
the same time. Brunner's elevation of this third
element to a dominant status in the general
mental structure of human beings coincides
remarkably with contemporary predisposi-
tions and demands.
An extremely penetrating and important re-
statement of this question, in the field of art
rather than of philosophy, by Dore Ashton,
must be considered equally cogent in relation
to contemporary anxiety and the very definite
gains which this prevailing uneasiness can image collapses at the doors of sleep. Are we (in the literal sense of the phrase, before it
achieve. She writes : 'The artist who believes not foolish to alienate ourselves from familiar, becomes vulgarized as we grow up) the latent
that he can maintain the "original status" of an everyday objects by confining them strictly to energies smouldering within them. In fact he
object deludes himself. The character of the their utilitarian functions ? Yet if we consider has, of course, occasionally permitted himself
human imagination is expansive and allegor- a different category of reference there is no the luxury of performing his magical act, with
ical. You cannot "think" an object for more doubt at all that it is such objects which in an appropriate hint of humour, in front of our
than in instant without the mind's shifting. ... most cases go to make up the symbolic struc- eyes, as in his celebrated paintings The red
Not an overcoat, not a bottle dryer, not a ture constituting the dream's framework, as model (1936) and The explanation (1951).
Coca-Cola bottle can resist the onslaught of psychoanalysis has demonstrated fairly con- Everywhere else the visually meticulous and
the imagination. Metaphor is as natural to the clusively. Magritte's supreme originality has carefully delineated material elements jettison
imagination as saliva is to the tongue.'t been to bring his investigations and his inter- their weight as they declare their indepen-
A fairly extensive interference fringe unites vention to bear at the level of these, in a sense, dence of the humble tasks we expect of them.
these two fields of speculation, and it is this primary objects, and of their sites (rural, They act as decoy-birds and their whole function
fringe which René Magritte has set himself the wooded, cloudy, maritime or mountainous) is to lure from cover what Magritte calls the
task of exploring during the past forty years; which loom large and with such immense `visible poetic images'. Their point of egress is
the only one to do so with absolute strictness — power behind the simple image conjured up by none other than that canvas resting on an easel,
a task which rewards us all (and him as well) our first 'object-lessons' (indeed, whenever I besides which he occasionally depicts himself
with ever-increasing pleasure. His half-open think about Magritte it is always these last two standing, a canvas with clearly outlined bor-
half-closed eyes, endowed with perfect visual words that spring to my mind). But it is pre- ders but whose surface has been reduced by
acuity, have been uniquely capable of tracking cisely at this level, too, that Magritte, while the intensity of its inner flame to total trans-
down and then being guided by the precise caressing with his hand those elements de- parency (one cannot fail to think of Mallarmé's
moment when the oneiric image topples over riving intensely from relative reality, able also to `virgin paper'). Magritte has given to several
in the waking state and when, too, the waking liberate with 'a single wave of his magic wand' versions of this painting the title The beautiful