La maison de verre

René Magritte (in 1939)

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Dreamer asked

si può aver una analisi descrittiva dell'opera più dettagliata?
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen answered

Ciao,
La maison de verre -come avrai giá letto dalla voce di catalogo sulla stessa pagina web- é il risultato anch'esso dell'incontro di Magritte con il collezionista Edward James. Cosí come La reproduction interdite, quest'opera prende spunto da alcune fotografie che l'artista scattó all'inglese James. Ti invito a dare un'occhiata anche a questo dipinto dalla collezione Boijmans Van Beuningen per soffermarsi non solo sulle chiare somiglianze visive, ma anche sugli spunti riflessivi che Magritte incorpora.
La figura di spalle, in entrambi i dipinti, puó essere intesa come un invito per l'osservatore a immedesimarsi nella scena contemplativa. Probabilmente anche tu hai pensato ad una somiglianza con il tema romanticista-simbolista (alla metá del XIX secolo) della figura di spalle che ammira un sublime paesaggio, come ad esempio nelle opere di Friedrich.
In Reproduction Interdite, il riflesso dell'uomo nello specchio porta a interrogarsi sull'individualitá, su come percepiamo noi stessi quando ci confrontiamo con il mondo. Tu come interpreteresti la negazione di questo riflesso?
Una possibile chiave di lettura é quella piú universalista sulla condizione dell'uomo nel mondo e sulle domande che tutti noi ci poniamo riguardo la tendenza spersonalizzante della modernitá, come si puó notare dall'assenza di un volto che identifichi una persona specifica.
In Maison de verre invece, l'individuo affiora dalls figura di spalle. Qui la riflessione sulla condizione umana é meno generalizzante e piú introspettiva. Simile ad un dipinto di metá ottocento, l'uomo si trova ad ammirare l'orizzonte di questa distesa d'acqua da cui peró sembra non riuscire a trarre nessuna conclusione sulla sua condizione, a differenza invece dei paesaggi romantici dove la manifesta grandezza della natura esemplifica le asperitá della vita umana. Il volto ritratto da Magritte non rappresenta chiunque, non comunica un senso universale, poiché in questo caso sembrerebbe che per cercare le giuste risposte l'uomo si rivolga a se stesso.
E' interessante anche soffermarsi sugli elementi dipinti da Magritte in La Maison. Osservando il dipinto, cosa vediamo?
Il frammento di volto che affiora é l'unico elemento che identifica qualcosa, cioé un uomo con specifici connotati. E per quanto riguarda il resto della composizione? Pensi anche tu che il cielo, la distesa d'acqua, il parapetto in pietra bianca e l'uomo di spalle non identifichino nulla di specifico? Il cielo ad esempio, non é caratterizzato da nessuna nuvola, non si colora di nessuno dei toni che solitamente contraddisinguono diversi momenti della giornata. Perché secondo te?

Spero che la mia risposta sia stata esaustiva e che le informazioni fornite siano efficaci per portare avanti un'analisi piú dettagliata del dipinto. Mi auguro anche che gli spunti di riflessione siano utili per te per interpretare l'opera secondo la tua visione.

Saluti,
Mara
Mariela asked

Hello, where will be Magritte’s painting in April? Thanks!
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen answered

Hi Mariela, This gouache - and several other gouaches and paintings by Magritte are in the MUDEC in Milan, in the exhibition 'Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray e il Surrealismo' (until July 30.). Kind regards, Els

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Specifications

Title	La maison de verre
Material and technique	Gouache on paper
Object type	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Location	This object is in storage

Dimensions	Height 33,6 cm Length 40,2 cm
Artists	Artist: René Magritte
Accession number	2942 (MK)
Credits	Purchased 1977
Department	Modern Art
Acquisition date	1977
Creation date	in 1939
Collector	Collector / Edward James
Provenance	Edward James, Chichester 1939-64; Edward James Foundation, Chichester 1964-77
Exhibitions	Brussels 1939; London 1973a; Rotterdam 1996a; Brussels 1998; Rotterdam 2006; Liverpool 2011; Edinburgh/Hamburg/Rotterdam 2016-17
Internal exhibitions	Gek van surrealisme (2017)
External exhibitions	René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle (2011) Surreal Encounters - Collecting the Marvellous (2016) Dalí, Magritte, Man Ray and Surrealism. Highlights from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023) Only the Marvelous is Beautiful (2022) Dal nulla al sogno (2018) Dalí, Ernst, Miró, Magritte... (2016) A Surreal Shock – Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021) Surrealist Art - Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2021) A Surreal Shock. Masterpieces from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (2023)
Research	Show research A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Literature	Hammacher 1973, p. 128; Brussels 1978, p. 65; Sylvester 1994, p. 42, cat. no. 1158; Brussels 1998, p. 241; Rogiers 2003, pp. 39-50; Draguet 2006, p. 118; Edinburgh 2016, pp. 213, 215, 248, cat. no. 99
Material	Paper > Vegetable material > Organic material > Material > Material and technique
Object	Drawing > Two-dimensional object > Art object
Technique	Gouache > Drawing technique > Technique > Material and technique
Geographical origin	Belgium > Western Europe > Europe

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Entry catalogue A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van beuningen

Author: Marijke Peyser

René Magritte’s gouache La maison de verre was part of a large group of the Belgian Surrealist’s works purchased by the British patron Edward James in 1938.^[1] This work is a continuation of the ‘portrait manqué’ and is similar to a portrait Magritte made of James two years earlier: the oil painting La reproduction interdite. The starting point for the gouache and the painting was the same: a photograph of James looking at Magritte’s painting Au seuil de la liberté. In a letter to James dated 12 July 1939, Magritte wrote: ‘It is not surprising that I thought about the photograph I took of you, in which you are standing with your back to the camera. That photograph gave me the chance to show a fine example of the depiction of invisible things.’^[2]

For Magritte the face of another was an ‘invisible thing’ that he did not understand and so he could not portray it. He could only reproduce what he understood and this was why the compiler of the five-volume oeuvre catalogue of René Magritte’s work (1992-94), the art historian and critic David Sylvester, identified this gouache as a fragmentary self-portrait of the artist.^[3] A second argument, also put forward by Sylvester, is practical: the jacket of the person portrayed is identical to the jacket that the artist wears in his self-portrait La clairvoyance (1936).^[4]

Finding a title for La maison de verre proved difficult. Magritte often did not think up his own titles, but was inspired by suggestions from his friends. In his house in rue Esseghem in Jette-Brussels, where Magritte and his wife Georgette had been living since 1930, he received writers such as Nougé, the leader of the Belgian Surrealist group, his mentor E.L.T. Mesens and Camille Goemans, who not only dealt in art but wrote Surrealist poems as well, Marcel Lecomte, Paul Colinet and the authors Louis Scutenaire and his wife Irène Hamoir. They encouraged the artist and gave him the help he needed in finding titles for his work.^[5] In April 1939 Magritte described the painting as ‘a man looking at the sea seen from the back, but whose face we can still see’.^[6] Magritte had already turned down two earlier titles, La présence éternelle and La colère, suggested by Paul Nougé. Then he decided to fall back on a title he had used previously, L’idée fixe, because he felt it was ‘so appropriate for this difficult case’.^[7] In the end Magritte chose La maison de verre. In a letter to his friend Marcel Mariën, the youngest member of the Belgian Surrealist group, he wrote: ‘I think we have found the right title for this gouache with the face in front of the head and the sea: La maison de verre’.^[8] This title focuses attention on the ‘fragment’ of the face. The reference to the house is an additional element that ‘evokes an idea of space and surrounding depth while the image remains limited to fields placed on top of one another into infinity: face, back, sea and sky’.^[9]

Footnotes

[1] Sylvester 1993a, p. 63.

[2] Sylvester 1994, p. 42, no. 1158.

[3] Rotterdam 2006, p. 118.

[4] Sylvester 1992a, p. 306.

[5] Ceuleers 1999, p. 10.

[6] Sylvester 1994, p. 42: letter to Marcel Mariën, April 1939.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Michel Draguet in Rotterdam 2006, p. 118.

Show research A dream collection - Surrealism in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

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All about the artist

René Magritte

Lessen 1898 - Schaarbeek 1967

René Magritte studied at the academy in Brussels. He began as pattern designer in a carpet factory and as painter by painting and designing advertising posters...

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