Yesterday before Mass at Our Lady of the Victories (at Sablon), Margaret and I went to the Musée Magritte. It was a great visit — I knew many of the images, but the presentation (in conjunction with works of Jean-Michel Folon) worked effectively to contextualise his works and to set them in their biographical, historical, and sequential settings. Likewise the quotations inscribed on the walls constantly hark back to the intricacy of imagination and expression, cumulatively making a compelling case for his importance as a theoretician of imagination.
Most of all, though, I was unprepared for the intensity of his colour palette. Reproduction belies the vivid luminance of many of the canvases; at the risk of cliché, you simply have to see them to appreciate this element of Magritte’s oeuvre.
The exhibition also did well in depicting Magritte’s marriage to Georgette Beyer, a challenging, enduring relationship. There’s a good film to be made there (but made in Europe, please, not in the USA).
Best of all, for me, was the physical evidence that the Magritte curators think that ‘Les mots et les images’ stands as an especially illuminating instance of his understanding of signification, of painting, and of how it all works. Let’s normalise Magritte as semiologist and hermeneutician worthy of thoughtful consideration.