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Lot Essay
Les valeurs personnelles is widely considered one of Magritte's greatest masterpieces, notable for both its unique imagery and its especially beautiful execution. Magritte began the painting at the end of 1951, when Colinet enclosed a sketch of it in a letter to Marin (fig. 1); he completed it by February of 1952 when he wrote to Marin that he had started two additional works featuring oversized objects entrapped in small rooms (fig. 2, and Sylvester, appendix no. 109; private collection). Magritte offered Les valeurs personnelles to his dealer Alexander Iolas in April, and shipped it to him in July of that year. Iolas was violently upset by the picture and wrote to Magritte complaining that it made him feel "sick...depressed...helpless...confused." Iolas begged the artist, "Be an angel and explain it to me" (quoted in D. Sylvester et al., op. cit., p. 192).
This request prompted an extraordinary letter from Magritte, containing one of his most complete explanations of a picture:
About the picture Personal Values--let me tell you first that it was not hurriedly painted, as you say: I worked on it for at least two months, and every detail was reconsidered and revised until a certain state of grace was achieved (it is not the traditional state of grace). I therefore attribute the judgment you express to your haste; as soon as you look at this picture with the approach necessary for the acceptance of a work of art whatever it may be like, you will certainly change your mind. Such an approach is impossible if the mind is preoccupied with irrelevant, utilitarian and rationalistic considerations. Indeed, from the point of view of immediate utility, of what relevance is the notion that, for instance, a sky is chasing around the walls of a bedroom or a gigantic match [is] lying on the carpet or an enormous comb [is] standing upright on the bed?... In my picture, the comb (and the other objects as well) has specifically lost its 'social character,' it has become an object of useless luxury, which may, as you say, leave the spectator 'feeling helpless' or even make him ill. Well, this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture. A picture which is really alive should make the spectator feel ill, and if the spectators aren't ill, it is because 1) they are too insensitive, 2) they have got used to this uneasy feeling, which they take to be pleasure... Contact with reality (not the symbolic reality which allows social exchanges and social violence) always produces this feeling. (Quoted in ibid., p. 192)
Magritte initially called the work Le champ libre (The Clear Field), only adopting the present title in April 1952. It was Paul Noug, Magritte's friend and collaborator, who suggested Les valeurs personnelles. This is especially noteworthy since Noug, in an essay on Magritte, once wrote:
What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important? Without doubt, those that are most common. The human importance of an object is in direct proportion to its banality... The aim is to make contact with the object itself, and to do so in such a way that a kind of enrichment results.
It is in this way that Magritte starts to examine an egg, a door, our gaze, the light, a leaf, a mountain, a house, our hunger, our face, our love...
Here, it is the real that is envisaged; it is not some aggregate of abstract qualities but the dialectical system of almost infinite richness that a thing forms with ourselves at the very moment we are considering it. In such a dynamic whole, exchanges take place between the innumerable sensory, affective and intellectual forces. (Quoted in S. Whitfield, op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1992, pp. 37-38).
Magritte gave a similar explication of his oeuvre:
My paintings show objects deprived of the sense they usually have. They are shown in unusual contexts... Ordinary objects fascinate me. A door is a familiar object but at the same time it is a bizarre object, full of mystery... I suppose you can call me a surrealist. The word is all right. You have to use one word or another. But one should really say realism, althought that usually refers to daily life in the street. It should be that realism means the real with the mystery that is in the real. ("The Enigmatic Visions of Rene Magritte," Life, 22 April 1966, pp. 113-119; quoted in R. Magritte, Ecrits complets, Paris, 1992, pp. 609-611)
(fig. 1) Drawing by Colinet in a letter to Marin, mid-December 1951.
(fig. 2) Ren Magritte, La chambre d'coute, 1952.
Menil Collection, Houston.
This request prompted an extraordinary letter from Magritte, containing one of his most complete explanations of a picture:
About the picture Personal Values--let me tell you first that it was not hurriedly painted, as you say: I worked on it for at least two months, and every detail was reconsidered and revised until a certain state of grace was achieved (it is not the traditional state of grace). I therefore attribute the judgment you express to your haste; as soon as you look at this picture with the approach necessary for the acceptance of a work of art whatever it may be like, you will certainly change your mind. Such an approach is impossible if the mind is preoccupied with irrelevant, utilitarian and rationalistic considerations. Indeed, from the point of view of immediate utility, of what relevance is the notion that, for instance, a sky is chasing around the walls of a bedroom or a gigantic match [is] lying on the carpet or an enormous comb [is] standing upright on the bed?... In my picture, the comb (and the other objects as well) has specifically lost its 'social character,' it has become an object of useless luxury, which may, as you say, leave the spectator 'feeling helpless' or even make him ill. Well, this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture. A picture which is really alive should make the spectator feel ill, and if the spectators aren't ill, it is because 1) they are too insensitive, 2) they have got used to this uneasy feeling, which they take to be pleasure... Contact with reality (not the symbolic reality which allows social exchanges and social violence) always produces this feeling. (Quoted in ibid., p. 192)
Magritte initially called the work Le champ libre (The Clear Field), only adopting the present title in April 1952. It was Paul Noug, Magritte's friend and collaborator, who suggested Les valeurs personnelles. This is especially noteworthy since Noug, in an essay on Magritte, once wrote:
What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important? Without doubt, those that are most common. The human importance of an object is in direct proportion to its banality... The aim is to make contact with the object itself, and to do so in such a way that a kind of enrichment results.
It is in this way that Magritte starts to examine an egg, a door, our gaze, the light, a leaf, a mountain, a house, our hunger, our face, our love...
Here, it is the real that is envisaged; it is not some aggregate of abstract qualities but the dialectical system of almost infinite richness that a thing forms with ourselves at the very moment we are considering it. In such a dynamic whole, exchanges take place between the innumerable sensory, affective and intellectual forces. (Quoted in S. Whitfield, op. cit., exh. cat., New York, 1992, pp. 37-38).
Magritte gave a similar explication of his oeuvre:
My paintings show objects deprived of the sense they usually have. They are shown in unusual contexts... Ordinary objects fascinate me. A door is a familiar object but at the same time it is a bizarre object, full of mystery... I suppose you can call me a surrealist. The word is all right. You have to use one word or another. But one should really say realism, althought that usually refers to daily life in the street. It should be that realism means the real with the mystery that is in the real. ("The Enigmatic Visions of Rene Magritte," Life, 22 April 1966, pp. 113-119; quoted in R. Magritte, Ecrits complets, Paris, 1992, pp. 609-611)
(fig. 1) Drawing by Colinet in a letter to Marin, mid-December 1951.
(fig. 2) Ren Magritte, La chambre d'coute, 1952.
Menil Collection, Houston.