René Magritte

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Description

René Magritte
SMOKING PIPES
signed Magritte
ink on paper
25.2 by 15.4cm.
9 7/8 by 6in.

Provenance

E. L. T. Mesens, Brussels (a gift from the artist)
Andrée Melly, London

Literature

London Gallery Bulletin, London, April 1938, no. 1 (illustrated on the cover)
David Sylvester (ed.) and Sarah Whitfield, René Magritte, Catalogue Raisonné. Oil Paintings and Objects, 1931-1948, London, 1993, vol. II, p. 61, illustration of the cover of London Gallery Bulletin

Catalogue Note

The present work was executed for the first issue of The London Gallery Bulletin (fig. 1), published in April 1938. In March of that year, the gallery was taken over by Roland Penrose and E. L. T. Mesens, and to mark the new management's exhibition program, they opened with a Magritte exhibition at midnight between 31st March and 1st April, April Fools' Day. Accompanying the exhibition, the first issue of the Bulletin was devoted entirely to Magritte, with essays by Herbert Read, Paul Nougé, Humphrey Jennings, and a poem by Paul Eluard.

The immediately striking effect of this drawing derives from one of Magritte's favourite visual strategies, that of replacing a human head by an object. By using the technique of mise-en-abyme, or replicating the same image to infinity, Magritte presents the object in its dual existence, both as the face of the man smoking a pipe, and the pipe itself, one metamorphosing into the other, and giving birth to the next link in the chain. The otherwise mundane image is thus transformed into an arresting composition and a visual pun characteristic of Magritte's œuvre.

Fig. 1, Cover of The London Gallery Bulletin, April 1938