From Library Journal
Handsome and serious yet accessible, this book catalogs an extensive exhibition held at the Royal Museum Brussels this year. It covers the full spectrum of Magritte's work, from the omnipresent, mass-reproduced images to the more difficult and lesser-known photography and commercial poster work he did. The shortish essays, by Belgian curators and other acknowledged authorities (including David Sylvester and Sarah Whitfield), are clear; a personal contribution by the artist's friend Harry Torczyner is helpful in understanding Magritte the man. All in all, this is a very good book with very good illustrations on an enormously popular artist. For general collections; specialized collections will find it a useful complement to Sylvester's five-volume catalogue raisonne (Sotheby, 1992- 97).?Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
With essays by several specialists and more than 500 illustrations (350 full-color plates), this admirable volume provides a comprehensive view of Magritte's art, from his early experiments with Cubism to his ultimate position as one of the greatest of the Surrealists. The essayists are wary of definite explanations of Magritte, but David Sylvester and Sarah Whitfield have retrieved the text of a lecture that the painter delivered in Antwerp in 1938. Titled "La Ligne de vie," it described a few of the artist's experiences and explained his purpose, which was to destroy the deadly, entrenched conformity of bourgeois thinking--a reasonable goal for a socialist. He did not explain why he thought the arbitrary juxtaposition of unrelated objects would accomplish that. What the beautifully painted, provocative images unquestionably do accomplish is to lure the viewer into creating for them whatever context imagination can contrive. The result is likely to be unsettling. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
