Magritte has long been one of our favourite artists, and his works have had a profound influence on my own work. A case in point is his painting The Eternally Obvious, 1930, oil on five canvas panels (pictured above), the point of departure for my multi-panelled, close to life-sized work The Daughter of Time, 1997, linocuts on interfacing with hand stitching (pictured below).
René Magritte was a lifelong fan of crime fiction, including the series of Fantômas novels created in 1911 by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. I’ve never read the novels, but the silent film version of Fantômas, directed by the great Louis Feuillad, first released during 1913-14 as a five-part serial, is one of my all-time favourite films. It was a delightfully unexpected surprise to encounter Magritte’s The Flame Rekindled, 1943 (pictured below), which is based loosely on the cover illustration of the first Fantômas novel. A variation of the same image was used as the poster for Feuillad’s film.
Not for a moment did I dream I’d ever see The Eternally Obvious or The Flame Rekindled in the flesh, let alone over one hundred of Magritte’s finest works in a single venue. A selection of them is directly below.
Shane and I may have bid another fond farewell to Sydney and the Potts Point area we’ve come to love (top image), but our memories of the superlative MAGRITTE exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales will stay with us forever.
MAGRITTE concludes on February 9. It’s up there with the finest and most impressively mounted exhibitions I’ve ever seen.
