René Magritte - Hawkins-Weeks Photography

An open sketchbook with leather casing rests on a wooden surface, displaying postcards and handwritten notes about Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.The left page features a postcard of Magritte’s painting The Labors of Alexander, depicting the Leaning Tower of Pisa propped up by a giant silver spoon under a blue sky. Handwritten notes curve around the image and line the bottom of the page.The right page holds a postcard of The Son of Man, showing a man in a dark overcoat and bowler hat with his face obscured by a floating green apple against a cloudy sky and sea backdrop. Additional cursive handwriting fills the space above and below the postcard.

Whilst on holiday last week in Belgium, I had a chance to visit the Musée Magritte in Bruxelles (https://musee-magritte-museum.be/) and what a great experience.

I’ve always been fascinated by the surrealists and what makes Magritte different for me, say from Dalí or Miró, is his ability to see the surreal from the ordinary. The well-known paintings with a bowler hatted man, suggest the ordinary greyness of middle class life at the time but juxtaposed with surreal objects; the apple in the Son of Man or the dove in Man in a Bowler Hat. As Magritte poses himself, the question we all ask is why the apple or the dove, but, of course, it’s the wrong question. It’s not about ‘why’, it’s about celebrating the mystery and playfulness.

What also strikes me about his work is the sheer scale of just having fun; take that spoon propping up the Leaning Tower in the Night of Pisa, I can imagine him in childlike playfulness, placing a teaspoon in front of his eyes and, scaling it to prop the tower up.

You can also see the influence of his early graphic design career in the many paintings that use graphical techniques of repetition, cut-out and lettering (his own script hand was beautiful).

Overall, I think his work is stunning and has influenced many other artists, such as Ruscha, Warhol and Johns.