Descripción del cuadro «Perspective»
In the 1940s, the relationship between René Magritte and the founder of the Surrealist movement, Andre Breton, heated up to the limit. The latter was so dissatisfied with the artist's creative pursuits that in 1946 he crossed him off the Circle's membership list. Nevertheless, when in 1952 Breton, with the support of Sophie Babe, opened the gallery A L'Etoile Scellée (can be translated as "At the Sealed Star") and intended to hold a group exhibition there, he received a letter from Magritte reproaching him for not inviting him to participate and proposing two of his works. The Surrealist leader agreed - and one of the works on display was a gouache Perspective.
The painting, depicting a coffin in an armchair, was painted in 1949, and was the first work in a series which was later expanded to include other gouaches, graphic drawings, oil paintings and even sculpture. Magritte thus proved once again that by working with the same motif one can not fall into indifference, but find new facets to it.
René Magritte's colleague, the surrealist Marcel Marienne, describes his encounter with Perspective as follows: "[...] Magritte began by painting in gouache a small work with a frontal view of a coffin in a chair. I remember exactly that when Nougere and I saw it for the first time, we laughed immediately. In doing so, we experienced the pleasure that Magritte himself must have felt when he found the idea, but which he eventually evaporated. Because (and here it is not a false statement!) it is a funny picture, because death and laughter, as we know, always go hand in hand.
Thus, in this subject, for the first time the artist uses irony or even black humor, placing a wooden coffin in the place where the living hero should be, and in subsequent paintings of this series he will proceed to a similar play on the subjects of famous masterpieces.
Text prepared by Elina Bagmet