René Magritte

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Description

René Magritte
LA CLAIRVOYANCE or LA MÉMOIRE
signed Magritte (upper right); inscribed La Mémoire on the reverse; signed, titled, dated 1937 [sic.] and dedicated on the reverse of the frame
coloured crayons, pastel and gouache on paper
42 by 29.5cm.
16 1/2 by 11 5/8 in.

Provenance

Margaret Krebs, Brussels (probably acquired from the artist)
Private Collection, Brussels (acquired from the above circa 1966)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie d'Orsay, Les Peintres Surréalistes. Delvaux, Ensor, Labisse, Magritte..., 1999, no. 10, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Literature

Letter from Magritte to Volker Kahmen, 27th January 1965, in Magritte Ecrits, p. 177
David Sylvester (ed.), Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné, Gouaches, Temperas, Watercolours and Papiers Collés 1918-1967, London, 1994, vol. IV, p. 281, no. 1578, illustrated (with incorrect measurements)

Catalogue Note

The image of Venus de Milo appears in several of Magritte’s paintings (fig. 1) and gouaches, and he also hand-painted several plaster reproductions of this famous sculpture. In the present work, the artist plays his favourite game of confronting the viewer with unexpected images and confusing him with altered realities. Here, Magritte quotes his own stone-paintings, in which a human figure or an everyday object is transformed into a stone, by rendering the famous antique sculpture in flesh. By painting Venus in soft pastel colours, he undermines the audience’s perception by reversing their expectation and understanding of a familiar image, and creating something that is at the same time recognisable and surprising.

Volker Kahmen had suggested that Magritte should paint a Venus de Milo of speckled granite, presumably in the style of his 'stone' paintings; while rejecting this idea, Magritte came up with the idea of painting a Venus de Milo of flesh: 'The sudden absence of stone, where stone really exists, and the presence, however, of the form that the stone embodied, must necessarily evoke a sense of mystery. The 'nature' of such a statue would not thereby be made arbitrary or subject to a whim: it is necessary that it should be flesh' (quoted in Sylvester (ed.), op. cit., p. 281).

Fig. 1, René Magritte, La Folie des grandeurs II, 1948-49, oil on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington