OUR WEEKLY PROCRASTINATION

Musée Royaux's Central Hall.

View from the Museum Café.

The Café.

René Magritte Les Mots Et Les Images (poster outside the exhibition).

Exhibition entry hall. You cannot take photos inside the exhibition. Photos via The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Last week we had the opportunity of visiting the the Musée Royaux des Beaux-arts de Bruxelles, and we spend some great hours there. The museum is composed of different museums like the Fin-du-siecle Museum, the Old Masters Museum, the Modern Museum, and the Magritte Museum, that was the one I was looking forward to visit the most.

The Magritte Museum holds the largest Magritte collection in the world, from some of his most iconic paints, to sculptures, painted objects, music scores, letters, manifestos, a lot of photographs, painters that influenced him, and his advertising posters, something really interesting to see, giving  you a thorough account of Magritte life, work and play, his thoughts on art, on surrealism, on language as a system of representation. 

The exhibition is organized chronologically, starting with his constructivist period and his work with the '7 Arts' group; explores his discovery of Chirico and the surrealists; his trip to Paris and the return to Brussels; his impressionist period; and finally the last part of the Museum is entitled The enchanted Domain and is dedicated to Magritte's research into repetition and to the large Magrittian images focused around The Dominion of Light and The Domain of Arnheim. Currently, the museum is hosting one of the most emblematic works by Magritte: Personal Values (1952). The painting has been lent by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

I recommend to use the audio-guides to accompany you through the visit, there is a little chronology in the entry of every room, but after that you're pretty much on your own, specially if you don't speak French or Flemish.

To finish, one of the great Magritte's quotes that I wrote down in my little notepad, and a couple more wonderful paintings that you can see in the museum (via The Internet ;) ).

"Je déteste mon passé et celui des autres. Je déteste la résignation, la patience, l’héroïsme professionnel et tous les beaux sentiments obligatoires.
 
Je déteste aussi les arts décoratifs, le folklore, la publicité, la voix des speakers, l’aérodynamisme, les boyscouts, l’odeur du naphte, l’actualité et les gens saouls.
 
J’aime l’humour subversif, les tâches de rousseur, les genoux, les longs cheveux des femmes, les rêves des jeunes enfants en liberté, une jeune fille courant dans la rue.
 
Je souhaite l’amour vivant, l’impossible et le chimérique. Je redoute de connaître exactement mes limites."

Je ne vois pas la [femme] cachée dans la forêt, in La Révolution surréaliste, Paris, no.12, December 15th 1929.                  Via Musée Magritte.

André Breton, Qu’est-ce que le surréalisme?, Brussels, René Henriquez Editeur, 1934. Via Musée Magritte.

Personal Values, 1952. Via Musée Magritte.

The lovers, 1928. Via The Internet.