Magritte A Life

The first major biography of the pathbreaking, perpetually influential surrealist artist and iconoclast whose inspiration can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé—by the celebrated biographer of Cézanne and Braque

In this thought-provoking life of René Magritte (1898-1967), Alex Danchev makes a compelling case for Magritte as the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world. Magritte’s surreal sensibility, deadpan melodrama, and fine-tuned outrageousness have become an inescapable part of our visual landscape, through such legendary works as The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) and his celebrated iterations of Man in a Bowler Hat.

Danchev explores the path of this highly unconventional artist from his middle-class Belgian beginnings to the years during which he led a small, brilliant band of surrealists (and famously clashed with André Breton) to his first major retrospective, which traveled to the United States in 1965 and gave rise to his international reputation.

Using 50 color images and more than 160 black-and-white illustrations, Danchev delves deeply into Magritte’s artistic development and the profound questions he raised in his work about the very nature of authenticity. This is a vital biography for our time that plumbs the mystery of an iconoclast whose influence can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé.

ALEX DANCHEV, who died as he was finishing this biography, was educated at University College, Oxford; Trinity Hall, Cambridge; and King's College, London. He was the author of the biographies Georges Braque and Cézanne: A Life, as well as a new translation of The Letters of Paul Cézanne. He also wrote the essay collections On Art and War and Terror, On Good Evil and the Grey Zone, and 100 Artists Manifestos. For three years before his death, he was professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland.

SARAH WHITFIELD is an art historian, writer and curator. She is coauthor of the René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, and serves on the authentication committee for the Estate of Francis Bacon.

List of Illustrations xi
Preface xxv
Introduction xxvii
 
1. His Secret Jungle 3
2. Normal Madness 31
3. Cupid’s Curse 59
4. The Aura of the Extraordinary 87
5. Charm and Menace 118
6. The Cuckoo’s Egg 154
7. Through the Keyhole 193
8. Surfeit and Subversion 233
9. The True and the False 271
10. 1948–1967 310
 
Magrittiana: A Note on Sources 353
Acknowledgments 359
Abbreviations 363
Notes 367
Index 419