A Mysterious Partnership: Magritte at the Art Institute

BY FRANCK MERCURIO

One party makes art. The other buys it. That’s the standard relationship between artist and collector: a business transaction between producer and consumer. But a new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938, re-examines this arrangement and presents a more collaborative relationship between Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte (1898–1967) and British art patron Edward James (1907–1984). 

To be clear, the exhibition doesn’t focus exclusively on Magritte’s and James’ unusual association. Their creative partnership is just one story within a larger narrative that covers Magritte’s formative years, a time when Magritte matured as an artist and became widely known as a Surrealist. 

Co-organized by the Museum of Modern Art and the Menil Collection, the exhibition features over 100 paintings, collages, drawings, and objects, along with a selection of photographs, periodicals, and commercial work from this period in Magritte’s career.

Writing in the exhibition catalog, Art Institute of Chicago curator, Stephanie D’Alessandro describes Edward James as an “eccentric poet, arts patron, and collector of Surrealist art.” He first became acquainted with Magritte in 1936 at the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London. By 1937, James had commissioned the artist to create three large-scale paintings for his London townhouse.

“The project represented the promise of an artistic and professional turning point for Magritte,” writes D’Alessandro. “It was the first major commission he had ever received.”

The commission evolved into a collaboration between Magritte and James; Magritte created the artwork while James arranged a site-specific display space for the paintings in the ballroom of his townhouse. At the heart of the installation were three Magritte paintings: Le Modèle Rouge (or The Red Model), La Jeunesse illustré (or Youth Illustrated), and Au seuil de la liberté (or On the Threshold of Liberty). The third of these three paintings now resides in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago.

All three works were seamlessly integrated into the décor of the ballroom and presented in a dramatic fashion. The canvasses were set into the walls and displayed as a kind of triptych behind two-way mirrors. With the flip of a switch, the space behind the mirrors was lit, and the paintings were instantly revealed to the viewer. In true Surrealist fashion, the reflected image of the viewer vanished, mysteriously replaced with Magritte’s pictures.

“Mirrors became windows,” writes D’Alessandro, “but those windows offered views onto a place that was familiar, strange, sensational, and disequiliberating.”

Magritte was not the only artist that James collaborated with. He also partnered with Salvador Dali to create such iconic objects as Lobster Telephone (1936) and Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) for the same London townhouse.

According to D’Alessandro, “The London residence was, from the outside, indistinguishable from other homes in the neighborhood. Once inside, however, it was like no other, merging antique and modern furnishings with art in a style known as ‘fantasy’ or ‘fantastic modern.’”

Magritte’s paintings stayed in James’ personal possession until 1964 when his art collection was transferred to the Edward James Foundation. In 1972 the Foundation auctioned off much of the collection—including the Magritte paintings—presumably to help finance West Dean College, one of the Foundation’s initiatives.

On the Threshold of Liberty eventually made its way into the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago. The other two paintings are now in the collections of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. The current exhibition at the Art Institute reunites all three works.

In addition to the James’ ballroom triptych, the exhibition will also present new scientific research on an iconic Magritte painting: Time Transfixed. The work—originally owned by James and now residing at the Art Institute—was recently X-rayed and photographed using infrared technology. The photos revealed a completely different image hiding under the surface: a figure of a reclining man, perhaps a study or a variation of Magritte’s Spring Eternal.

“This is what we love to find in conservation,” says Allison Langley, Associate Conservator of Paintings at the Art Institute. “There’s nothing more exciting than finding another painting underneath such an iconic image.”

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926–1938. June 24–October 13, 2014. For more information, visit the Art Institute of Chicago’s website: www.artic.edu

Image pictured at top of this page: René Magritte. The False Mirror, 1929. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2014 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.