“Against widespread pessimism,” he said, “I now propose a search for joy and pleasure." (https://www.biography.com/people/rené-magritte-9395363)
“We have neither the time nor the taste to play at Surrealist art, we have a huge task ahead of us, we must imagine charming objects which will awaken what is left within us of the instinct to pleasure.” (www.mattesonart.com/1947-1948-vache-period.aspx)
Magritte lived in Belgium throughout the war years, concerned that if he continued to paint as he had pre-war, his paintings with their politically incendiary meanings would get him arrested and imprisoned or worse, placed in an asylum.
He questioned the purpose and value of painting as the horrors of war consumed the European world once again. He wrote a Manifesto, "Surrealism in Full Sunlight" and
“Against widespread pessimism,” he said, “I now propose a search for joy and pleasure." (https://www.biography.com/people/rené-magritte-9395363)
“We have neither the time nor the taste to play at Surrealist art, we have a huge task ahead of us, we must imagine charming objects which will awaken what is left within us of the instinct to pleasure.” (www.mattesonart.com/1947-1948-vache-period.aspx)
began to paint Renoir-like works such as
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| Forethought, 1943. |
The parodic quality extends to the style and palette of the work, and presages the later Vache Period, when his ever-lurking sly humour mutates into full frontal crassness and vulgarity.
"La Période Vache", 1947-1948
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| The Cripple, 1948 |
Magritte departed from his experiment with sunlit figuration, perhaps having sickened himself. He then painted this group of deliberately bad satirical parodies of themes and styles, his own and others, such as Ensor and Renoir.
Certainly he was stricken by a dilemma about the value of painting and art following the devastating world war. But he also wanted to tweak the Parisian art world that he thought had not paid significant due to his oeuvre, which was already a significant accomplishment in modern painting.
These works were received very negatively by the art world when they were shown.
...With some international recognition and success ... Magritte was not impressed by his invitation to hold his one man show at the Galerie du Faubourg, Paris. As a joke concocted by Magritte and his friends, Rene painted a series of hilarious pictures to exert a bit of revenge upon the Paris art world. Magritte experimented with a brash Fauve-inspired style in late 1947* dubbed "Vache" (literally, cow)...
According to Bernard Marcadé: "In French, the term vache is used for an excessively fat woman, or a soft, lazy person. An unpleasant person is described as a peau de vache (cow-skin); amour vache (cow-love) refers to a relationship more physical than emotional. It thus treads a line between vulgarity and coarseness, and that is what characterises this set of paintings and gouaches, representing a radical departure from the painter’s neutral, detached style which had finally been accepted by Parisian Surrealist orthodoxy...
After the misunderstood Parisian show, Magritte returned to his signature figuration to paint a late group of images that re-iterated his early painterly insights, repeating some motifs and introducing new ones. Post war paintings seem to have a certain quality of light I don't see in the earlier work.
The Great Early Work (Recap)
• text/image relationship drawn from modern advertising
• impactful, surprising, conceptual concision
• psychological, conceptual, modern linguistic, semiotic content
• repetition of motifs and images
• airless, repressive, static energy and mood
• rational and mysterious paradoxes
...Still, there is no getting away from the sense that most of the works, as ingenious as they are as illustrations, are basically one-liners. Their power is striking and blatant, much like that of the advertising flyers and billboards Magritte made throughout much of his career to pay the bills. What we thought we knew about Magritte, it turns out, was pretty much all we needed to know, easily accessible in dorm-room posters and ubiquitous reproduction...
-Charles Desmarais, May 18, 2018, San Francisco Chronicle
But wait. Other paintings are conceptual heavyweights, revealing the subjective, abstract nature of language. They comment on the philosopher-linguist Wittgenstein and his
abstruse and significant perspectives that define and shape modernity. This painting is discussed at length in John Berger's "The Ways of Seeing", a key book of criticism which parses the issue of subjective perception, superficial decisions and misconceptions based on the visual.
One of Magritte's last paintings even references phenomenological philosophy directly. In Hegel's "Phenomenology of Mind"(1807) he explains the evolution of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge.
In the above painting the word below the image doesn't match - what is the reference of door to horse? I always thought it looks like the horse is actually standing in a half-door of his stall - it's Mr. Ed in the old TV show about a talking horse.
In the clock/wind it's "time flies" (with the speed of the wind and it's fleeting quality) or a play on the confusion of English pronunciation. We used to wind clocks! I still do, my mother's old mantle clock, and my grandfather's pocket watch.
Bird/pitcher uses one of Magritte's motifs,
the bird beak. The pitcher seems poised
like a perched bird, it's bird-beak spout functioning with the opposite of a food-gathering function.
In the last quarter, the word and image have equal reference - word and picture match. The use of the quarter divided frame is another reference to a Magritte motif the window and the frame. The painting also appropriates the format used in childrens' language primers which pair image above the corresponding word.
When I study Magritte, I think how widely referential the visual can be, and how easy it is to miss them, or be miscued by them.I loved
Now when I look at a Magritte painting, I think, "what did I miss?" and thinking that has become a mantra for me as I struggle to "see".
Certainly he was stricken by a dilemma about the value of painting and art following the devastating world war. But he also wanted to tweak the Parisian art world that he thought had not paid significant due to his oeuvre, which was already a significant accomplishment in modern painting.
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| The Famine, 1948 |
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| The Mark, 1948 |
According to Bernard Marcadé: "In French, the term vache is used for an excessively fat woman, or a soft, lazy person. An unpleasant person is described as a peau de vache (cow-skin); amour vache (cow-love) refers to a relationship more physical than emotional. It thus treads a line between vulgarity and coarseness, and that is what characterises this set of paintings and gouaches, representing a radical departure from the painter’s neutral, detached style which had finally been accepted by Parisian Surrealist orthodoxy...
After the misunderstood Parisian show, Magritte returned to his signature figuration to paint a late group of images that re-iterated his early painterly insights, repeating some motifs and introducing new ones. Post war paintings seem to have a certain quality of light I don't see in the earlier work.
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| Evening Falls |
The Great Early Work (Recap)
• text/image relationship drawn from modern advertising
• impactful, surprising, conceptual concision
• psychological, conceptual, modern linguistic, semiotic content
• repetition of motifs and images
• airless, repressive, static energy and mood
• rational and mysterious paradoxes
 |
| The False Mirror, 1928 |
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| The Lovers, 1928 |
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| The Treachery of Images, 1928 |
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| The Human Condition, 1935 |
...Still, there is no getting away from the sense that most of the works, as ingenious as they are as illustrations, are basically one-liners. Their power is striking and blatant, much like that of the advertising flyers and billboards Magritte made throughout much of his career to pay the bills. What we thought we knew about Magritte, it turns out, was pretty much all we needed to know, easily accessible in dorm-room posters and ubiquitous reproduction...
-Charles Desmarais, May 18, 2018, San Francisco Chronicle
But wait. Other paintings are conceptual heavyweights, revealing the subjective, abstract nature of language. They comment on the philosopher-linguist Wittgenstein and his
abstruse and significant perspectives that define and shape modernity. This painting is discussed at length in John Berger's "The Ways of Seeing", a key book of criticism which parses the issue of subjective perception, superficial decisions and misconceptions based on the visual.
One of Magritte's last paintings even references phenomenological philosophy directly. In Hegel's "Phenomenology of Mind"(1807) he explains the evolution of consciousness from sense-perception to absolute knowledge.
In the above painting the word below the image doesn't match - what is the reference of door to horse? I always thought it looks like the horse is actually standing in a half-door of his stall - it's Mr. Ed in the old TV show about a talking horse.
In the clock/wind it's "time flies" (with the speed of the wind and it's fleeting quality) or a play on the confusion of English pronunciation. We used to wind clocks! I still do, my mother's old mantle clock, and my grandfather's pocket watch.
Bird/pitcher uses one of Magritte's motifs,
the bird beak. The pitcher seems poised
like a perched bird, it's bird-beak spout functioning with the opposite of a food-gathering function.
In the last quarter, the word and image have equal reference - word and picture match. The use of the quarter divided frame is another reference to a Magritte motif the window and the frame. The painting also appropriates the format used in childrens' language primers which pair image above the corresponding word.
When I study Magritte, I think how widely referential the visual can be, and how easy it is to miss them, or be miscued by them.I loved
 |
| Hegel's vacation |
Now when I look at a Magritte painting, I think, "what did I miss?" and thinking that has become a mantra for me as I struggle to "see".
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| Magritte in later life |
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