Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings.

Magritte

Arts & Photography

René Magritte

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Ballantine Books

Rene Magritte, a master of fantastic art, was born in Lessines, Belgium in 1898, and despite the age in which he lived - the growth of mass media and mass communication - preferred to live his life in a small suburb of Brussels, painting what he liked to pain and caring little for the theories of his Surrealist contemporaries.The forth paintings illustrated in this book need no words - what Magritte did more than anything else was to p aint meticulously familliar, even personal objects, in unfamiliar, even startling settings - out of context at first sight in both time and place.If beauty lies in the eye of the beholder then so too does understanding - in the interpretation of Magritte's work the eye, the mind and the heart all compete without a fixed formula or equation but with equal claims.

Ballantine

The Portable Magritte represents a new approach to the enjoyment and study of art in book form. With more than 400 color reproductions and a compact handheld size, this book manages to be affordable and comprehensive. It's like a catalogue raisonné that fits in a backpack. This accessible format is a perfect match for the paintings of René Magritte-one of the few twentieth-century painters whose works are immediately approachable and who has an enduring cultlike following. His surrealistic and mysterious visions always provoke introspective thought and imagination. All of Magritte's most characteristic and beloved motifs-the green apple, the bowler hat, and the dreamlike twilight hour-make their appearance, along with some surprising lesser-known paintings. The artist's method and meaning is explored in an intriguing essay by Robert Hughes, the art critic for Time magazine and acclaimed commentator on art and culture. A hip and current update on this timeless artist, The Portable Magritte makes an ideal gift for students as well as art lovers of any age.

The Portable Magritte

Robert Hughes

History & Criticism

Universe

Book by René Magritte, Harry Torczyner

Magritte, the true art of painting

Harry Torczyner

H. N. Abrams : distributed by New American Library

Rene Magritte (1898-1967) did not keep copies of his letters, nor did he generally save those he received. But Harry Torczyner, Magritte's confidant, friend, and attorney, cherished the letters he received from the great Belgian Surrealist artist between 1957 and 1967, and kept them all - along with duplicates of his own responses. Here, selections from this lively correspondence are reproduced and set in context by Torczyner's notes. In his letters, Magritte dealt candidly with the daily concerns of his art. He revealed the workings of his own creative process in words and, frequently, in drawings. Although they belonged to different worlds, Magritte the painter and Torczyner the lawyer shared similar mental inclinations and a vivid curiosity. They were both hostile to obligatory sentiments; boredom was deemed to be the supreme menace, and they remained mutually critical in their correspondence and in their encounters - while remaining friends. The Magritte-Torczyner connection had its special tone, which this book faithfully reflects. Illustrated with reproductions of paintings mentioned in the letters, as well as with personal photographs of both men, this intriguing book offers fresh insights into the last ten years of Magritte's life and work.

Magritte/Torczyner: Letters Between Friends (English and French Edition)

Harry N. Abrams

Magritte 1898-1967

Individual Artists

Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary

Museum of Modern Art

Magritte: Dangerous Liaisons

Blain di Donna

Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of renowned Belgian painter Rene Magritte - the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist - in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos and much more, a new Magritte emerges: part Surrealist, part literalist, part celebrity, part rascal.While this book is bound to appeal to admirers of Magritte's art and those who are curious about his personal life, there is also much to delight all readers interested in the history and theory of art, philosophy and politics, as well as lovers of creativity and the inner workings of a probing, inquisitive mind unrestricted by genre, medium or fashion.

Selected Writing

Alma Books

Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of renowned Belgian painter René Magritte - the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos and much more, a new Magritte emerges: part Surrealist, part literalist, part celebrity, part rascal. While this book is bound to appeal to admirers of Magritte's art and those who are curious about his personal life, there is also much to delight all readers interested in the history and theory of art, philosophy and politics, as well as lovers of creativity and the inner workings of a probing, inquisitive mind unrestricted by genre, medium or fashion.

Selected Writings

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

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Books by René Magritte