René MAGRITTE, his painting, surrealism and Dali.

René Magritte (1898.1967)

Autograph letter signed to Rose Bauwens-Capel

Two pages in-8° on paper with its letterhead. Stamped and canceled autograph envelope.

Brussels. February 7, 1962.

Dalí is too subject to respectable ideas to deserve any title other than “painter for priests”.

Extraordinary and precious letter from the surrealist painter delivering his vision of his work and vigorously refuting all kinds of interpretations that can be made on the use of symbolism in his painting. Magritte ends his letter with a bloody paragraph against Salvador Dalí, while confessing his admiration for Ernst and Chirico.

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“Dear Madam, I thank you for your letter of February 2, but I think I must tell you that the interpretations of my paintings must be not only indifferent, but foreign to the paintings, these being not “rebuses”, “riddles” that need to be resolved through interpretation or explanation. These kinds of games do not lack pleasure, but the painting that I design does not correspond to these games, however honorable they may be. So, regarding “The Breast” (and for my other paintings as well) there is no question of symbolizing anything : the human breast, for example. It is not seriously discussed, since without a little speech, the painting would be incapable of informing the viewer that it symbolizes “the breasts of humans”.

Painting is incapable of expressing ideas and feelings . Painting – when there is no mystification – is limited to showing . In the case of “La Poitrine”, the painting simply shows a bunch of houses. Such an image shows us the unknown (we did not know this painting before: a bunch of houses). This is by far more interesting than a known idea, that of human breasts, for example? On the other hand, wanting to “interpret” an image of the unknown is to misunderstand it, to want to get rid of it, to want to replace it with any idea: the maternal breast, justice, good and evil, etc. “The Chest” shows the unknown, that is to say the things themselves (and not the idea we have of things). It shows a bunch of houses. The houses themselves, what they really are. And what are they? A pile of bricks and stones which has changed its appearance, but which has – beneath the appearance – remained bricks and stones lying on the earth?

On the subject of Dali, of whom you speak to me as if I shared your interest in him, I must tell you that the use he makes of symbols is enough to classify him – for me – among the painters having no real freedom of thought. He is too subject to respectable ideas to deserve any other title than “painter for priests”. Apart from Chirico and Max Ernst, there is no painter in the world who interests me.  »

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Magritte here evokes his painting La Poitrine , produced in 1961, and depicting a pile of multicolored houses placed on the horizon. The work is now kept at the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

The collector couple, Rose Bauwens and Joseph Capel, were intimate with surrealist artists. Rose Bauwens-Capel was also director of the magazine Le Ciel bleu , published in 1945, to which Breton, Colinet, Magritte, Marïen, Picasso, Scutenaire, etc. collaborated.

Ref: David Sylvester (ed.), Sarah Whitfield & Michael Raeburn, René Magritte, Catalog Raisonné , Antwerp., 1994, vol. IV, appendix 140, p. 325.