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Lot Essay
Magritte understood that the collages Max Ernst made during the early 1920s stood for a rupture with all of the traditional means of painting. "Scissors, paste, images and genius," he wrote, "in effect superceded brushes, paints, models, style, sensibility and that famous sincerity demanded of artists" (from "La Ligne de vie," in L. Scutenaire, Avec Magritte, Brussels, 1977, p. 74). Magritte made his first collages with papiers collés in Brussels in 1925, and completed about thirty works of this kind before traveling to Paris in September 1927. All but three contain fragments of sheet music which were cut from a piano score of a popular English musical comedy, The girls of Gottenberg by George Grossmith, Jr. and L.E. Berman.
The artist's friend E.L.T. Mesens listed the present work under the title Les reveries du prom. solitaire in the inventory of his collection. He had taken the title from a painting Magritte had done in late 1926 (Sylvester, no. 124); there is no indication, however, that Magritte referred to the collage in this way. In both the collage and the painting there is a dark silhouette of a man wearing an overcoat and a bowler hat on the right side. In the painting he faces with his back to the viewer, while in the collage he is turned toward the viewer. A similar silhouette, flipped and cut from the Grossman and Berman piano score, appears in an untitled collage that Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn place somewhat earlier in the series (Sylvester, no. 1616).
In some of the collages Magritte refers to various means of transportation or locomotion; there are flying machines, jockeys or riders on horseback, coaches, or, as seen here, an English buggy drawn by a pair of horses known as a brougham. The configuration of the cut music paper, seen elsewhere in this series as well, is related to the scrolled head of a violin, with elements derived possibly from the f-holes cut into the body of the instrument or the treble clef sign in musical notation. This shape, which casts a shadow and seems capable of self-perambulation, counterbalances the figure of the standing man, who is usually associated with the artist himself.
In 1921-1924 Magritte was employed as a designer in a wallpaper factory; later, while he was making the collages, he had taken on part-time work as a commercial artist in advertising, and designed sets for the Théâtre du Groupe Libre. The flatness and precisely cut shapes in the collages are related to contemporary poster design, and the simple composition of foreground and sky in this series resemble the theater stage, as well as the landscape format seen in works by Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, the modern artists Magritte most admired.
* This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.
The artist's friend E.L.T. Mesens listed the present work under the title Les reveries du prom. solitaire in the inventory of his collection. He had taken the title from a painting Magritte had done in late 1926 (Sylvester, no. 124); there is no indication, however, that Magritte referred to the collage in this way. In both the collage and the painting there is a dark silhouette of a man wearing an overcoat and a bowler hat on the right side. In the painting he faces with his back to the viewer, while in the collage he is turned toward the viewer. A similar silhouette, flipped and cut from the Grossman and Berman piano score, appears in an untitled collage that Sarah Whitfield and Michael Raeburn place somewhat earlier in the series (Sylvester, no. 1616).
In some of the collages Magritte refers to various means of transportation or locomotion; there are flying machines, jockeys or riders on horseback, coaches, or, as seen here, an English buggy drawn by a pair of horses known as a brougham. The configuration of the cut music paper, seen elsewhere in this series as well, is related to the scrolled head of a violin, with elements derived possibly from the f-holes cut into the body of the instrument or the treble clef sign in musical notation. This shape, which casts a shadow and seems capable of self-perambulation, counterbalances the figure of the standing man, who is usually associated with the artist himself.
In 1921-1924 Magritte was employed as a designer in a wallpaper factory; later, while he was making the collages, he had taken on part-time work as a commercial artist in advertising, and designed sets for the Théâtre du Groupe Libre. The flatness and precisely cut shapes in the collages are related to contemporary poster design, and the simple composition of foreground and sky in this series resemble the theater stage, as well as the landscape format seen in works by Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, the modern artists Magritte most admired.
* This lot may be exempt from sales tax as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice in the back of the catalogue.