René Magritte Books

"The Portable Magritte" represents a new approach to the enjoyment and study of art in book form. With more than 400 color reproductions and a compact handheld size, this book manages to be affordable and comprehensive. It's like a catalogue raisonne that fits in a backpack. This accessible format is a perfect match for the paintings of Rene Magritte-one of the few twentieth-century painters whose works are immediately approachable and who has an enduring cultlike following. His surrealistic and mysterious visions always provoke introspective thought and imagination. All of Magritte's most characteristic and beloved motifs-the green apple, the bowler hat, and the dreamlike twilight hour-make their appearance, along with some surprising lesser-known paintings. The artist's method and meaning is explored in an intriguing essay by Robert Hughes, the art critic for "Time" magazine and acclaimed commentator on art and culture. A hip and current update on this timeless artist, "The Portable Magritte" makes an ideal gift for students as well as art lovers of any age.

"In this beautiful monograph, a collection of revelatory essays focuses on five common images in René Magritte's work-fire, shadows, curtains, words, and the fragmented body. Featuring vibrant reproductions of more than 100 works, this book helps readers understand how the artist employed these images in ways both deceptive and realistic. The book explores how he distorted accepted interpretations of classic symbols; why he so often used words as elements of his paintings; and how he applied aspects of the theater in his works. As Magritte's paintings have become subsumed by the very commercialism they sought to ridicule, this volume takes a fresh look at an artist whose familiarity masks an incredible gift for deception and rapier-like intellect"--

The retrospective exhibition of Magritte's work organized by curator David Sylvester at the Tate Gallery in 1969 prompted the Menil Foundation, Texas, to invite him to produce a catalogue raisonne of Magritte, and also this monograph. Sylvester's treatment of the artist's life depicts the ironies of a career full of disappointment, explores his chequered relationship with his dealers, and reveals the realities of a legendary marriage. Its analysis of the work combines discussion of individual pieces with examination of the artist's obsessions and attitudes.

The first ever publication of writings by Magritte in the English language. It provides a fascinating and intimate glimpse into the life of the renowned Belgian painter

A. M. Hammacher, former director of the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands and an authority on twentieth-century art, examines Magritte's interest in language in relation to images and his literary influences, especially his fascination with the themes of Edgard Allan Poe. He describes Magritte's methods of working, and carefully elucidates forty works, reproduced in colour, seeking to introduce the reader to the artist's ideas and obsessions without depriving these pictorial riddles and haunting scenes of their mysterious qualities.

Beautiful full-color pictures of Magritte's finest work including historical context.

A beautiful hardbound book about the life and work of Rene Magritte, featuring the Magritte Museum. Full of rich text and vividly reproduced works on archival paper. From the flap (via Google Translate): "This book reflects the ambition and innovative approach of the Musée Magritte Museum, which is the fruit of an oath partnership between the Royal Museums for Clean Junctions of Belgium, the Rene Magritte Foundation, and GDF SUEZ. Thanks to these three partners, the museum has become a unique place and a necessary stage for the introduction to and the study of the work and life of the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte."

Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of renowned Belgian painter René Magritte - the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist - in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos and much more, a new Magritte emerges: part Surrealist, part littérateur, part celebrity, part rascal. While this book is bound to appeal to admirers of Magritte's art and those who are curious about his personal life, there is also much to delight all readers interested in the history and theory of art, philosophy and politics, as well as lovers of creativity and the inner workings of a probing, inquisitive mind unrestricted by genre, medium or fashion.

When René Magritte reached his 40s, something unexpected happened. The painter, who had honed an iconic Surrealist style between 1926 and 1938, suddenly started making paintings that looked almost nothing like his earlier work. First he adopted an Impressionist aesthetic, borrowing the sweet, hazy palette of Pierre-Auguste Renoir—which he…