René Magritte was a Belgian artist, born at the very end of the 19th Century, whose oeuvre spanned nearly the entire Modern movement from Impressionism to Fauvism to Cubism to Pop Art, but largely and more famously hovering around Surrealism.
As someone who supported himself in advertising, there is something graphic, immediate, witty, and eye-catching among his most enduring works, less disturbing perhaps than the works of Dali, but often just as striking, as Jungian in their attempt to connect with our collective unconscious.
Here, among a trilogy of paintings he entitled L'Empire des lumières or The Empire of Light, is the one in the collection at MoMA. (Another hangs just up the street at the Guggenheim and for the third, one must, fittingly, travel to Brussels to encounter.)
A single streetlamp illuminates a haunting lonely streetscape, made more eery by the disconnect of the bright blue daytime sky hanging incongruously overhead, complete with one of his hallmarks, an array of rather evenly placed jolly puffy clouds, like clowns, clowns where they shouldn't be. What is more unnerving?
So potent was the image it was used by the producers of The Exorcist for their advertising material.
No comments:
Post a Comment