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Personal values
René Magritte • Painting, 1952, 80×100 cm
Description of the artwork «Personal values»
Although René Magritte is often counted among the Surrealists, unlike his colleagues such as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst and Yves Tanguy, he did not create fantasy worlds, but explored the strangeness and ambiguities hidden in reality. By 1950, Magritte's work had undergone various experiments, had been influenced by Impressionism and Fauvism, and was approaching its last period of flowering. It was in the 1950s and 1960s that the artist created or continued such famous series of works as The Art of Communication, "Empire of Light и "Prospects."as well as cycles of paintings with fossils, by men in cauldrons and everyday objects. The latter includes the painting "Personal Values," which will be discussed below.
While working on the painting "Personal Values," Magritte recreated the interior of a room with furniture and ordinary, familiar to every person things. However, the artist has given these everyday objects an enormous scale, which causes the viewer a sense of disorientation and irrelevance. In addition, this work mixes the understanding of the interior and exterior space due to the fact that the walls of the depicted room look like the heavens. Thus, the familiar is transformed before our eyes into the unfamiliar, the abnormal and the strange: Magritte creates a paradoxical world that, in his own words, "defies common sense.
The artist began painting Personal Values at the end of 1951 and finished it by February 1952. In July of the same year, he sent the canvas to his dealer Alexander Iolas, but the latter did not like the painting. The painter soon received a reply: Iolas said that he felt "crushed... depressed... helpless... confused," and asked: "Would you be so kind as to explain it to me?" Then Magritte wrote one of his most unusual letters to the dealer, in which he gave a detailed commentary on the work. Specifically, he explained his work in this way:
"In my painting the comb (as well as other objects) have deliberately lost their 'social character,' they have become an object of useless luxury which, as you say, leaves the viewer with a 'feeling of helplessness' or even makes them feel unwell. Well, this is proof of the efficacy of the image. A really live canvas should act on the viewers in such a way that they feel bad, and if it doesn't, it's only because 1) they are too insensitive, 2) they are used to this unpleasant sensation that they take for pleasure... Contact with reality... always evokes this feeling.
Thus, in Personal Values, as in many of his other works, René Magritte questions the correctness of human conceptions of the world by interfering with the normal scale of objects, denying the laws of gravity, and showing that nothing in our society can be taken for granted. In "Personal Values," this effect is heightened by the depiction of objects we so often encounter in everyday life.
Text prepared by Elina Bagmet
While working on the painting "Personal Values," Magritte recreated the interior of a room with furniture and ordinary, familiar to every person things. However, the artist has given these everyday objects an enormous scale, which causes the viewer a sense of disorientation and irrelevance. In addition, this work mixes the understanding of the interior and exterior space due to the fact that the walls of the depicted room look like the heavens. Thus, the familiar is transformed before our eyes into the unfamiliar, the abnormal and the strange: Magritte creates a paradoxical world that, in his own words, "defies common sense.
The artist began painting Personal Values at the end of 1951 and finished it by February 1952. In July of the same year, he sent the canvas to his dealer Alexander Iolas, but the latter did not like the painting. The painter soon received a reply: Iolas said that he felt "crushed... depressed... helpless... confused," and asked: "Would you be so kind as to explain it to me?" Then Magritte wrote one of his most unusual letters to the dealer, in which he gave a detailed commentary on the work. Specifically, he explained his work in this way:
"In my painting the comb (as well as other objects) have deliberately lost their 'social character,' they have become an object of useless luxury which, as you say, leaves the viewer with a 'feeling of helplessness' or even makes them feel unwell. Well, this is proof of the efficacy of the image. A really live canvas should act on the viewers in such a way that they feel bad, and if it doesn't, it's only because 1) they are too insensitive, 2) they are used to this unpleasant sensation that they take for pleasure... Contact with reality... always evokes this feeling.
Thus, in Personal Values, as in many of his other works, René Magritte questions the correctness of human conceptions of the world by interfering with the normal scale of objects, denying the laws of gravity, and showing that nothing in our society can be taken for granted. In "Personal Values," this effect is heightened by the depiction of objects we so often encounter in everyday life.
Text prepared by Elina Bagmet
