It’s the surreal thing
If you’re fascinated by Magritte’s art, head for his home in Brussels...
AROTTWEILER, straining on its leash, trots towards me. The dog is wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, even though it is an overcast day. But this illogical scene in the centre of Brussels seems highly appropriate on a walk in the footsteps of Rene Magritte, whose home city is commemorating 50 years since the great Surrealist’s death with exhibitions and trails.
Dog and owner turn a corner and are gone, and I pop into the quirky La Fleur en Papier Dore cafe, with walls crammed with photographs. This was a haunt of the close-knit group of Brussels Surrealists who would help Magritte come up with incongruous titles for his works, thereby adding to their mystery.
I sit down with a restorative glass of beer still wondering if I can believe my eyes, something I have been doing all day after looking at Magritte’s thought-provoking paintings of ordinary things in strange contexts.
I can’t get the images of floating apples and bowler hats, clouds indoors, and mirrors that don’t reflect, out of my mind.
My day started in the northern suburb of Jette where Rene and his wife Georgette set up home at 135 rue Esseghem in 1930. A clue that a very unorthodox couple l i ved behind the net curtains of the neat terrace house is a trail leading to it. The trail comprises 70 mosaics, inspired by Surrealism, set in to walls and pavements through the equally unremarkable surrounding streets. The Magrittes lived in a modest garden flat (with two other families upstairs) until international fame from a New York show in 1954 gave them the wealth to move to Schaerbeek, closer to the city centre. Even though he had a studio at the bottom of the garden in Jette, Magritte preferred to work in his dining room, dressed in a suit and tie – he was known for also wearing a bowler hat – like a Sunday afternoon amateur. He produced 800 of his works on canvas here, half his lifetime output. The sitting room fireplace is recognisable as the one a steam train charges out of in Time Transfixed, the glass doors between the sitting room and bedroom appear in Invisible World, and the sash windows are reproduced in The Human Condition. On the bed sits a stiff white Pomeranian dog, just like t he l at e pet he once had stuffed. Upstairs, now a museum, there are reproductions of 30 works lost through fire and war, photos and memorabilia, and examples of the film posters and advertising material he produced and called ‘ idiotic pieces’. These were his bread and butter in lean years when his art was too weird for most. Unlike other artists, Magritte couldn’t persuade res- taurants to take his peculiar pictures in exchange for meals. And a neighbour’s child rejected the drawing he gave her for her first communion, saying she would rather have sweets.
Today it couldn’t be more different. Children and adults alike are intrigued by his pictures and can even get inside them at the Atomium, an extraordinary landmark – comprising giant, shiny steel spheres joined by metal tubes and soaring 335ft – that was constructed for the 1958 World Fair.
Whizzing on escalators through dark tubes with sporadic swirling lights between the spheres is surreal enough, but until September 2018 you can also become part of iconic Magritte masterpieces inside the Atomium.
An exhibition called Magritte: Atomium Meets Surrealism has, among other interactive pieces, bowler hats suspended in the air, huge green apples to sit and stand on, a frame filled with clouds to pose for photos inside, and a lifesize waxwork of Magritte himself in a 3D re-creation of his painting Clairvoyance (in which he is painting a bird while looking at an egg on his dining-room table).
To see the most extensive collection of his real art in the world, you must head back to the Magritte Museum in Place Royale in the city centre. There are 200 of his marvellously strange works spread over three floors, including oil paintings, drawings, sculptures and short films.
And until next February, the adjoining Royal Museums of Fine Arts has a Magritte, Broodthaers & Contemporary Art show that has collected Magrittes from all over the world, including the iconic Ceci N’Est Pas Une Pipe (This Is Not A Pipe), on loan from Los Angeles.
The exhibition examines his relationship with his friend and fellow Belgian Surrealist Marcel Broodthaers, and his influence on 20th Century artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.
Round off your evening in Le Cirio, a brasserie in rue de la Bourse, one of the meeting places of the Surrealists, for an aperitif of the house speciality, Half-enHalf, white wine topped up with champagne. Then to supper in Le Greenwich cafe, in rue des Chartreux, where Magritte spent hours on end playing chess.
When he tried to sell his paintings there in the 1920s, legend has it the response was: ‘ If Magritte paints as well as he plays chess, he still has a long way to go.’
Enjoying reassuringly straightforward traditional Belgian dishes such as mussels and chips or carbonade (beef braised in beer) in its cosy surroundings is a nice, no-nonsense way to end a surreal day of double-takes and surprises.