Le Surréalisme en Belgique

Surrealism in Belgium? Magritte, a lot, Delvaux, a little, and you have wrapped it up. This short sighted view does not resist the analysis. And in particular since we have a work that will become a classic. The author, the director of the museum of Photography in Charleroi, dedicated a number of years to this subject. He did not avoid the sacred elements but removed the official coating that made them less attractive: go ahead and read the pamphlets on L’Imbécile, L’Emmerdeur and L’Enculeur ! They are done by Magritte and Marcel Mariën (1920-1993). The latter, hardly known by the public, is an essential link in Belgian Surrealism. He was the author in 1961 of a joke-pamphlet (taken very seriously) on theGrande Baisse(The huge discunt): it claimed Magritte was ready to sell his paintings to make them available to all …Nougé, Scutenaire, Mesens, Lefrancq are other highly studied artists of the same importance, up to the most recent epigones such as Tom Gutt or Claudine Jamagne. The rich iconography allows us to go beyond the movement’s icon-paintings. It combines photos from archives, collages and covers of major magazines such as Les lèvres nues (Naked lips).

• Le Surréalisme en Belgique, by Xavier Canonne, Fonds Mercator, 2007, 352 p., ISBN : 90-5163-659-6, 79 €.