Page 34 - Studio International - February 1969

An interview `Yes, well, I'll tell you first of all what I under- not myself because I am not interesting. I don't
stand painting to be. Painting is the art of have interesting ideas to communicate with
with juxtaposing colours in space in such a way that people, nor extraordinary sentiments. I am a
man who is altogether—if the word means
the effective aspect of the colour disappears to
allow for the description ofan inspired thought. something—normal, ordinary. I only see the
René Magritte This description is an image that one can see. things everybody sees, the sky, the trees, the
Thus, a description of the thought is poetry, mountain. I don't see invisible things like
and poetry means the creation of something— people who have had visions.'
Paul Waldo Schwartz the image that one paints.... That is what I But the unity of visible forms produces a
take painting to be.' mystery that questions the real.
But in general painters detest the word de- `Ah now, the mystery is there because a poetic
scription, even the description of an idea. image has a reality. Because 'the inspired
`Yes, but I don't describe an idea. I describe thought' imagines an order that unites the
a thought which contains only visible figur- figures of the visible, the poetic image has the
ations, and that can be described. If the same genre of reality as that of the universe.
thought contained ideas I would not be able Why? Because it ought to respond to an in-
to paint them.' terest we naturally have in the unknown.
The phrase la pensée inspirée was repeated inces- When one thinks "universe" it's the unknown
santly in Magritte's conversation as obliquely one thinks of—its reality is unknown. Which is
In June of 1967, Rene Magritte told me that and hermetically as the most tantalizing of his why, when one sees a poetic image, one poses.
the invisible is a dimension inconsistent with images. 'It is fundamental,' he said, 'that questions. Thus, I make—with known things —
painting, by nature the art of the visible. Two according to my conception, only the visible the unknown.'
months later, the Paris daily France-Soir pro- can be shown in a painting.' Throughout, the terms la pensée poétique and
claimed, 'Rene Magritte is dead; he was the But it can also suggest? la pensée inspirée resisted explanation. The con-
master of the invisible'. `Yes, it can suggest, but then there is no pre- versation switched to books, and Magritte's
On which side of the mirror did Magritte cision. What can a mountain suggest ? Weight ? answers were surprising. Surely Magritte
function? His words, in this regard, resisted Height? Well, I don't know.' would feel some affinity to the work of his
penetration. He spoke slowly, thoughtfully, at The spectre of a bird, perhaps ? fellow-Belgian Michel de Ghelderode, author
times passionately in his thickish Belgian `No!' Magritte became adamant. 'It does not of The Chronicles of Hell, who wrote, 'Have you
French. He spoke out of a personal certainty suggest a bird. One sees ! It doesn't suggest, it's ever come across your image already present
to a point that nearly excluded dialogue. Any there, it's precise. One sees a bird in the form in an old mirror?' Or, again, 'One has seen
question became the reference to an oblique of a mountain. It's precise. In the end, the objects seeking to do one ill ... and Hierony-
answer, the reflection of an unspoken harmony images that I paint are explicit, they hide mus Bosch has depicted very well for us the
which Magritte either could not or would not nothing, because an image is intangible. Vis- inscrutable, redoubtable world of things.' Or,
unravel. ible things always hide other visible things, but even, 'I discovered the world of shapes before
The rue des Acacias, where he lived and an intangible image can hide nothing.' discovering the world of ideas.'
worked in Brussels, came as a curious shock; And yet, there are symbols concealed in the `I don't know about Ghelderode,' Magritte
a long bourgeois facade of trim brick and care- image ? said. 'I've seen his plays and they bored me.'
ful chintz. It was a human labyrinth reduced `There are no symbols in my painting. What Yet Ghelderode dealt with the appearance of
to the immobility of still-life. Immobility des- is a symbol? It's a conventional figuration the invisible in the visible, the shadow of the
cribes unreality, and here was the world of which is sensed, represented, an idea. But invisible.
Magritte's Golconda, even without paradox, poetry and reality surpass the symbol.' `It's obvious that the invisible surrounds us.
dissonance or surreal innuendo. Still, there are certain themes in your work For example, we are surrounded by what they
Magritte's house intensified this feeling. The which repeat in an obsessional pattern. call Matter. And this Matter is invisible. I
cut-glass vases and sofas and knick-knacks `But there are no themes at all. I can't say have never seen Matter. One sees objects
were doubtless repeated in succession the because I always see the sky, the birds, houses, which have appearance and they are said to
length of the street. An insistent order pressed that these are themes. These are realities, not be made of Matter. This table is made of wood.
to the point of irritation. Magritte chain- themes. A theme is a subject that one treats I see wood....'
smoked but the ashtrays seemed to remain in a certain way, but I have no subjects in my But not the archetype?
empty. His silver cravat matched his silver hair; paintings. I have to discover the subject, and `Ah, that's something else. That belongs to a
dressed in a black suit he moved about with the things which permit me to discover a sub- theory of knowledge, Plato's. But I don't go
the diffidence of a banker. The studio upstairs ject are the figurations of the visible. That's along there. I think as though no one had
was scarcely a studio in the usual sense but the very different and, as for me, I have no artistic thought before me. I am not a philosopher, not
den of the same banker who paints on Sunday. aptitude. I am not a painter in the sense one a metaphysician. I paint images that are not
One corner of the neat little room, the part generally means, one for whom painting con- indifferent. They are not indifferent because
near its only window, contained an easel— sists just in putting beautiful colours on a they are poetic. I harness myself to that and it
with a blank canvas—and a palette encrusted canvas to make something beautiful for the seems quite a sufficient programme for me. I
with the blues and whites and silvers of eyes.' don't know how to do anything else. ... Real-
Magritte's spectral skies. But these visible figurations, juxtaposed, des- ism is something vulgar, ordinary, but for me
Downstairs, Magritte sat beneath his paint- cribe a personal universe. reality is not easily attained. And that's why I
ings. He sat dead in the middle of the sofa, Not juxtaposed—united. It's the colours that say surrealist to mean this reality we perceive
which only added to a surfeit of symmetry, and are juxtaposed. But the forms are united by the at certain privileged moments when we have
said that 'There are so many kinds of painting poetic thought. I don't believe that a universe presence of mind.'
•R
that when someone says the word painting can be personal; one would go mad. But
I hardly know what he means.' what I think is in question in my painting is the
But you've spoken of a kind of painting that universal. It's the real world, that of reality,
surpasses the idea of a physical surface. and not myself; that comes into question. It's