The Magritte Museum in Brussels housed in the neoclassical Altenloh Hotel and yes the exhibition doesn't start on the ground floor but on the top floor and has the most complete collection of Magritte's work I have seen. The the highlight of this month which was influenced by the Italian artist De Chirico but with Magritte's very own upside down elements is the painting titled Midnight Marriage which combines theatrical elements with a dream like quality. I have always been interested in Magritte's juxtapositions and combination of objects, the inversion of scale, the subversive humour his display of ordinary objects in unusual settings giving new meaning to familiar things. Like for example in the The Treachery of Images where one can see a pipe painted but underneath a message saying; this is not a pipe. Magritte's allusion that the pipe we see is not really a pipe but an 'image' of the pipe so the artist can never get the real essence of the object.
Magritte's is not a Pipe-The Treachery of Images 1928-1929
I love his play with reality and illusion like in the Empire of Light where the sky is bright blue against the dark house away to push away classical aestheticism so that the picture looks remote and the house is illuminated only by the light coming from a street light it creates an alternate poetic upside down imaginary an illustrative technique to destabilise the viewer mental habits of representation. Also the painting Nocturne it's a painting within a painting with common elements he will use through out in his work such as the bird in flight, fire.
Magritte's Empire of Light 1953-1954
Magritte's Nocturne 1925
Repetition of key elements was also important in his painting and I think the fact that he worked in advertising made him question the modernist belief in the 'original artwork'. I see also an influence in Freudian Psychoanalysis where repetition was associated with trauma. Several of his paintings also combine words and images but more then being surrealist there is a strong element of rational enquiry and also in misunderstanding that come with the use of language for example the famous painting the man with a bowler could be the artist or anybody else to pint that one can find the mysterious in every day life, he turns something solid ordinary into something else not solid.
The painting 'The Lover' with the faces covered who can't have an intimate embrace as they are separated by a piece of fabric which transform this act of passion in frustration. I wonder if it was about his mother who committed suicide in the Sambre river when he was 13 years old I have read some where that Magritte was present when they discovered her body in a river and that her dress was covering her face like in the painting, spooky wonder what Freud would have said about this..
Magritte's Lover's 1928
Anyway the Museum it's really easily accessible and the display of his work chronological there is a wealth of documentary covering his relationship with his wife and colleagues, friends. Definitely the greatest collection you can find about Magritte in a museum.
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