Pinnable

René Magritte (1898–1967) is seen as one of the foremost surrealist painters, but rather than as an artist Magritte considered himself as more of a thinker who conveyed his thoughts not through words but through his painting. His thinking evolved mainly around the relationship between words, images & reality, and the limits of our perception — what we see & cannot see. In contrast to the majority of his fellow surrealists, who shared an interest in psychoanalysis & spontaneity, Magritte was a theorist whose flights of fancy were grounded in the application of a dialectic method instead of being based on dreams & automatism. That being said, to the untrained eye the bulk of his work looks as weird as that of the next surrealist.

Admittedly, surrealism isn’t really my cup of tea, but I found the Magritte Museum in Brussels certainly worth a visit anyway. It is the flagship of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, whose main site is just around the corner. Boasting the world’s largest collection of Magritte’s paintings, drawings & sculptures, the museum chronologically orders some 230 works over three floors. The exhibition covers Magritte’s entire artistic life, including his advertising work. Starting on the top floor, visitors are introduced to his early period, when he experimented with various styles and directed his work towards surrealism. The second floor focuses on the years 1930–50, when Magritte laid low owing to the economic crisis and the war. Lastly, on the first floor are the types of work for which he is best known, such as The Dominion of Light and The Domain of Arnheim.

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