Volume 39, Number 19 · November 19, 1992
Painting in the Dark
By Richard Dorment
Magritte
an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, May 21–August 2;. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 9–November 22;. The Menil Collection, Houston, December 15, 1992–February 21, 1993;. The Art Institute, Chicago, March 16–May 30, 1993
Magritte: The Silence of the World
by David Sylvester
The Menil Foundation/Abrams, 352 pp., $75.00
Magritte
catalog of the exhibition by Sarah Whitfield
The South Bank Centre/Ludion, 320 pp., $35.00 (paper)
René Magritte: Catalogue Raisonné; Vol I: Oil Paintings 1916–1930
by David Sylvester, by Sarah Whitfield, edited by David Sylvester
The Menil Foundation/Philip Wilson Publishers/distributed by Rizzoli, 388 pp., $180.00
By appropriating the art of René Magritte to sell everything from airline tickets to television channels, Madison Avenue has created the impression that he was a painter of lightweight visual jokes. But there is another Magritte, a Magritte celebrated by the English critic David Sylvester and his collaborator Sarah Whitfield. Because of their work in the exhibition and books under review, we have begun to realize that he is a much darker, much more dangerous artist than the one whose sly visual conundrums have held so much appeal for advertisers and cartoonists.
Review, 4214 words
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