René Magritte: the timeless power of L’empire des lumières

It’s a mysterious, paradoxical scene: an expanse of blue, day-lit sky hovers above a quiet streetscape bathed in evening shadows. This striking juxtaposition, where the ordinary becomes sublime, is where the power of René Magritte’s L’empire des lumières lies. The motif of a nocturnal landscape in broad daylight, which Magritte explored across 17 unique paintings throughout his career, exemplifies the artist’s fantastical, fully realised surrealist vision.

Mica’s eye on Surrealism

On 19 November, Magritte’s L’empire des lumières of 1954 will be offered at Christie’s in New York as part of MICA: THE COLLECTION OF MICA ERTEGUN. A crown jewel of Ertegun’s panoramic collection, which spans fine art, jewellery, design and decorative art, the Magritte painting captures the controlled yet dazzling style for which she was renowned. It also represents her pioneering mindset in all things, as she was one of the first to collect Surrealist works in depth.

‘An icon of Surrealism, the Ertegun Magritte is arguably the finest, most deftly rendered and hauntingly beautiful of the series,’ says Max Carter, Vice Chairman of 20th and 21st Century art at Christie’s. ‘Like Mica’s eye, it is perfect.’

A subtle dichotomy of night and day

‘For me it’s not a matter of painting “reality” as though it were readily accessible to me and to others,’ Magritte once explained of his Surrealist works, ‘but of depicting the most ordinary reality in such a way that this immediate reality loses its tame or terrifying character and presents itself with mystery.’

In L’empire des lumières, a suburban streetscape is lit by a singular lamppost. Lights from within the upper story of a street-facing house add further illumination. In the foreground, a rippling body of water reflects these points of light, marking the first time Magritte introduced a body of water into the scene. A towering tree reaches up towards the cloudy blue sky, a dark shape piercing the daylight.

‘It’s an extraordinary viewing experience,’ says Imogen Kerr, Vice President at Christie’s. ‘Completely immersive, the scale of it is captivating, and there’s a transporting quality engendered by the dynamism of the day and night together. Magritte speaks of these impossibilities that are only possible within the mind, and questions the supremacy of our perception of what we call reality.’

In this painting’s subtle dichotomy of night and day, Magritte captures his artistic ethos in a single image — one he returned to again and again. The artist described his ‘intense personal interest in night and day’ as ‘a feeling of admiration and astonishment’. It was an idea that Magritte was inspired to explore after reading a poem by André Breton, the founder of the surrealist movement whose Surrealist Manifesto turns 100 this year.

Each subtly different from the next, the paintings in the series L’empire des lumières illustrate the artist’s powerful ability to turn symbols of ordinary, conventional life into agents of surprise and awe.

A masterpiece unveiled to great fanfare

Magritte created the present L’empire des lumières under unusual circumstances, largely in response to a fevered interest in his work. On 19 June 1954, the Venice Biennale opened to the public. In celebration of what was then the 30th anniversary of Surrealism, the event had been organised under the theme of ‘Surrealist taste.’

The exhibition at the Belgian Pavilion explored the fantastic in Flemish art from the 1500s through the twentieth century, with a retrospective of Magritte’s work as the centrepiece. Featuring 24 paintings that ranged from 1926 to his most recent compositions, the event was an opportunity for Magritte to showcase his most important works in one place and highlight the quintessential concerns of his oeuvre.

One of the masterworks of Magritte’s exhibition was the enormous L’empire des lumières, which attracted much fanfare. The flurry of interest provided a problem, as Magritte found himself promising the work to three different buyers. In the end, another collector altogether acquired the canvas: Peggy Guggenheim bought it directly from the Biennale for 1,000,000 lire. As a result, Magritte arranged to create three additional versions of L’empire des lumières to appease the other disappointed parties.

The present work was made for the Belgian collector Willy van Hove. Executed on a slightly larger scale than the original, it expanded upon the uncanny atmosphere of the iconic scene, enhancing the image’s visual poeticism.

In the end, the 1954 Biennale, which drew over 170,000 visitors during its run, cemented Surrealism’s place in the canon of 20th-century art and prompted Magritte to revisit and refine his celebrated motif of the L’empire des lumières.

‘Each iteration in the series, which Magritte worked at for 15 years, is distinct,’ says Carter. ‘Some are large, some small. Some are vertical, others horizontal. In some, the house is set back, in others it fully occupies the foreground. Here, Magritte achieves everything that makes these paintings so remarkable: the quality of light and watery animation, the vertical orientation and razor-sharp contrast between night and day.’

An enduring legacy

The motifs of Magritte’s oeuvre continue to resonate throughout popular culture today, inspiring artists and audiences alike. His surrealist images have seeped into the public consciousness, appearing across time and media, from the logo of CBS and the album covers of Pink Floyd to the music videos of Beyoncé. An image of a green Granny Smith apple would feature on each of The Beatles’ records — representing their multi-media company, Apple Corps — from Hey Jude onwards.

In many ways, it was Magritte’s talent for anchoring a scene with the commonplace while also delighting in the unexpected that has made his images so powerful and timeless. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in the L’empire des lumières series.

‘Magritte’s deceptively simple subjects and spirit of invention continue to enchant us,’ says Carter. ‘He combined technical mastery with vision and imagination as virtually no other 20th century artist had. As we celebrate the centenary of Surrealism, we are honoured to offer one of the movement’s icons.’

His iconic visual language — a blend of the familiar and strange that urges audiences to reconsider their everyday assumptions — reflects a lasting fascination with the boundaries of the real and imagined and raises questions we continue to ponder today. As an arbiter of taste known for defining her own visual language, it's no surprise that Mica was an early collector of Magritte's masterly series, drawn to the very best well before others.