The Albertina Opens "René Magritte ~ The Pleasure Principle"

Written by Pauline Jennings Wednesday, 16 May 2012 23:01

Vienna.- The Albertina is proud to present "René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle" on view at the museum from November 9th through February 26th 2012. A selection of more than 100 works from around the world will cover every creative phase of the artist, retracing Magritte’s artistic career. Conceived in collaboration with the Tate Liverpool, the exhibition addresses hitherto little-explored aspects of Magritte’s life and artistic activity. It focuses on his use of patterns and recurring objects, the subject of covering and unveiling, visual breaks and eroticism in his oeuvre. On the basis of Magritte’s most important works and early commercial pieces, the exhibition examines the connection between the artist’s paintings and his work for the advertising industry as well as the influence of pop culture. Drawings and collages, rarely shown photographs and films will also be on display in the exhibition.

René Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Léopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant,  and Régina (née Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte's early life, but he began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants. Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. From 1916 to 1918 he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring.

The paintings he produced during the years 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the offshoot of Cubism practiced by Metzinger. Most of his works of this period are female nudes. In 1922 Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922–1923, he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie le Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, "The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu)", and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927.


Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group. Galerie la Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. Surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte, in the early stages of his career, to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte's pieces, "Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle)" and "La Reproduction Interdite", a painting also known as "Not to be Reproduced". During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton. He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his "Renoir Period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium. In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto 'Surrealism in Full Sunlight'. During 1947–48—Magritte's "Vache Period" — he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style.

During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of faked works purporting to be by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Giorgio de Chirico - a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul Magritte and fellow Surrealist and 'surrogate son' Marcel Mariën, to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. At the end of 1948, he returned to the style and themes of his prewar surrealistic art. His work was exhibited in the United States in New York in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992. Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels. Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop, minimalist and conceptual art. In 2005 he came 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th.


The Albertina is a museum in the Innere Stadt (First District) of Vienna, Austria. It houses one of the largest and most important print rooms in the world with approximately 65,000 drawings and approximately 1 million old master prints, as well as more modern graphic works, photographs and architectural drawings. Apart from the graphics collection the museum has recently acquired on permanent loan two significant collections of Impressionist and early 20th century art, some of which will be on permanent display. The museum also houses temporary exhibitions. Vienna's Albertina was erected on one of the last remaining sections of the fortifications of Vienna, the Augustian Bastion. In 1745, it was refurbished by the director of the Hofbauamt, Emanuel Teles Count Silva-Tarouca, to become his palace. The building was later taken over by Duke Albert of Saxen-Teschen. He used it as his residence and later brought his graphics collection there from Brussels, where he had acted as the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands. For that purpose, he had the building extended by Louis Montoyer. Since then, the palace has immediately bordered the Hofburg. The collection was expanded by Albert's successors. The collection was created by Duke Albert with the Genoese count Giacomo Durazzo (Austrian ambassador in Venice). In 1776 the count presented nearly 1,000 pieces of art to Duke Albert and his wife Maria Christina (Maria Theresia's daughter). Count Giacomo Durazzo – brother of Marcello Durazzo (Doge of Genoa) – "wanted to create a collection for posterity that served higher purposes than all others: education and the power of morality should distinguish his collection...." In the 1820s Archduke Charles, the foster son of Duke Albert and Maria Christina, initiated further modifications of the building by Joseph Kornhäusel, which affected mostly the interior decoration. After Archduke Charles, his son Archduke Albrecht and then Albrecht's nephew Archduke Friedrich, Duke of Teschen lived in the building. In early 1919, the building and the collection passed from the Habsburgs into the ownership of the Republic of Austria. In 1920, the collection of prints and drawings was unified with the collection of the former imperial court library. The name Albertina was established in 1921. In March 1945, the Albertina was heavily damaged by bomb attacks. The Albertina was completely refurbished and modernized from 1998 to 2003, but the graphics collection did not reopen until 2008. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.albertina.at

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