Magritte: The Treachery of Images

Munich: Prestel, 2017. Cloth, 201 pages, colour illustrations; 29 cm. Published to coincide with the exhibition "Magritte. La trahison des images/The Treachery of Images", Centre Pompidou, Musee national d'art moderne, Paris, 21 September 2016 to 23 January 2017; Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main, 10 February to 5 June 2017. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Fine DJ. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Richly illustrated with colour plates. "In this beautiful monograph, a collection of revelatory essays focuses on five common images in Rene 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" - Publisher. CONTENTS: Preface, by Philipp Demandt; Ut pictura philosophia: portrait of Magritte as a philosopher, by Didier Ottinger; La Ligne de vie I (1938 lecture), by Rene Magritte; Words, shadows, flames, curtains, fragments: Magritte and the founding myths of painting, by Didier Ottinger; From arbitrary signs to elective affinities: painting against the imaginary bounds of the imagination, by Klaus Speidel; Seeing is believing: Rene Magritte and the invention of art, by Jan Blanc; The painter-king, by Barbara Cassin; Magritte and his curtains, by Victor I. Stoichita; Beauty is a formal problem, by Jacqueline Lichtenstein; From the image-screen to the art of the problem, by Michel Draguet.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 4to. Collectible.