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Tue 6 May, 2003 04:40 pm
Quote:A painting by Belgian surrealist master René Magritte has fetched 3.4 million euros (£2.3m) at auction. The most expensive painting sold in Belgium, ever.
The work, L'Oiseau de Ciel (Sky Bird), was regarded as the most important Magritte painting to go under the hammer during the past two decades.
It had been commissioned by the former Belgian airline Sabena in 1965.
The picture was sold to help raise money for 12,000 ex-Sabena employees made redundant when the airline went bankrupt in 2001.
It fetched almost three times its asking price during the sale in a hangar at Brussels international airport on Monday.
The work depicts the silhouette of a bird resembling a dove with its body filled with clouds.
Set against a blue sky, the bird is flying above a lit runway.
Magritte was a relatively unknown artist at the time it was commissioned.
It is not known how much Sabena paid for the painting, but Magritte reportedly said the fee allowed him to put "butter on my spinach".
Last month, works by Magritte were among Surrealist items collected by poet Andre Breton that fetched 46 million euros (£31.8m) at auction in Paris.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/3003779.stm
What do you think of the work of Magritte and Surrealism in general.
I myself adore him and have a reproduction of (IMHO) his most beautiful painting in my livingroom. The original
Chateau des Pyrenees is located in The Israel Museum(Jerusalem)
More Magritte, Dali and newcomer Fagan
In my Surrealism Gallery are some of my favorite Magrittes, Salvador Dali, and Solomon Fagan, an emerging artist I discovered two years ago. Fagan's drawings are amazing.
http://pages.ivillage.com/gaius_mohaim/whatisart/id139.html
-----BumbleBeeBoogie
Whenever you decide that you want to lapse into a coma read all of Andre Breton.He actually wrote conflicting treatises of the meaning of art.But I should go easy on the lad since he took on The Task Impossible.Marritte like every other artist is more or less a product of what came before.In fact he was late into the Surrealism gig.Many paintings previous to the 'movement' contained hints of surrealism.Whereas the Fauvists used bold colors and atmosphere to evoke emotion,the Dadaists broke down the barrier between the waking and the dream state.From this the Surrealists took the next logical step,making the impossible possible.Two artists stand out as orginal thinkers.Marcel Duchamp and Giorgio de Chirico.Neither man was part of a 'movement' yet influenced all of the above.As to whether Marritte is worthy of his price,he most aboslutely is.If you don't think so go to an amature showing sometime,real art never loses it's appeal.
It is a picture of a pipe.What if he said this is not a picture?
I find that most of the "Trompe"... surrealists look like their work is air brushed . Give me the "frottage" work of Max Ernst or Morris Graves. I think the roots of surrealism, like any other style, dont just build on what came immediately before. Often a movements true ancestor may be disconnected to that style by many years. For example, look at the work of Redon, or even the architectural styles of Rene MacIntosh. Here are the birthings of surreal views that predate the surrealists by half a century.
mabon52 wrote:It is a picture of a pipe.What if he said this is not a picture?
Not a picture? So what it is then?
pic·ture ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pkchr)
n.
A visual representation or image painted, drawn, photographed, or otherwise rendered on a flat surface.
A visible image, especially one on a flat surface or screen: the picture reflected in the lake; focused the picture on the movie screen.
A vivid or realistic verbal description: a Shakespearean picture of guilt.
A vivid mental image.
A person or object bearing a marked resemblance to another: She's the picture of her mother.
A person, object, or scene that typifies or embodies an emotion, state of mind, or mood: Your face was the very picture of horror.
The chief circumstances of an event or time; a situation.
A movie.
A tableau vivant.
NH is fond of definitions...I am fond of not definitions....
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a word is a millipicture.
Or, a picture is a kiloword.
I really cannot see what you are talking about for this apple in front of my face...
art
My completely subjective response is that most of surrealism is a bore. Caricatures of dream states, conscious constructions of supposedly unconscious phenonomena. They are for this reason theoretical representations rather than expressions.
I prefer "Sur-eel-ism", the art of standing on eels and calling it a philosophy.
Anybody that quotes William James has entered the palace of the master. I bet he would have a reasoned responce to Surrealism.Something clear and precise that was easily understood.
James
Yes, Mabon, it would be clear (i.e, easily understood), to say the least. I like the assertion that his brother, Henry James, was a novelist who wrote like a philosopher, while William James was a philosopher who wrote like a novelist.
Henry James
I'm not a hugh fan of Henry James.I feel a lot of his work has become dated and thus irrelevant.There was a movie made recently based on his work,but I forget the name of it.I think his euphemism for death was the best I ever heard.He called it 'The Distinguished Thing'.
This thread is branching off from the original subject.I'm surprised no one has mentioned Savlidor Dali,the most surreal surrealist of them all.
the honeybees. But trippingly he sat upon the water stone, and read aloud the symphony of frogs. And Mary, playing whist nearby thought longingly of buttered croissants. She shouted, "One-two-three-seven-green!" But nearly all his fingers had fled to Navarre. The circus was
I started to answer this question yesterday and my cursor froze. Is that surreal, or what?
I saw a Magritte show at the Hammer museum in LA about six years ago. I have never been personally attracted to the content of surrealistic paintings, but I decided to walk in to the area of the show and be open minded about them. I walked out again probably forty minutes later not personally attracted to the content of surrealistic paintings....
I think JL hit the nail on the head for me: that the work illustrates a conscious depiction of a purported unconscious phenomenon. That in itself just doesn't interest me very much. I too like more expressive work that may or may not register unconscious states.
I do enjoy the works of Man Ray, but I think technically he was Dada. Crap, better let my father know....
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