René Magritte *
(Lessines 1898–1967 Brussels)
Frou-Frous, 1951, signed, dated and numbered Magritte 17 août 1951 no. 93, colour pencil on paper, 29.5 x 22 cm, framed
The Comité René Magritte, Brussels, has confirmed the authenticity of the work. The certificate is currently in preparation.
Provenance:
Collection Isy Brachot, Brussels
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (by inheritance to the current owner)
Exhibited:
Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Tokyo; Le Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Kyoto; Le Mainchi Shimbun, Rétrospective. René Magritte, May-September 1971, exhib. cat. Tokyo 1971, no. 91 with full page b/w-ill. (label)
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels, Delvaux Gnoli Magritte. Œuvres originales, 8 November – 14 December 1974
Literature:
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels, Hyperréalisme: Maîtres Américains et Européens, Brussels 1974, cat. no. 39
Xavier Canonne (Ed.), Vendredi: une correspondance surréaliste: een surrealistische briefwisseling, Antwerp 2020, p. 1013, p. 901 with full page b/w-ill., p. 981 with full page col.-ill.
Green apples, melons and clouds: at first glance, these remain among the most instantly recognisable motifs in René Magritte’s art. The artist created a body of work in which precisely such everyday objects suddenly appeared strange and unfamiliar, placing them in unexpected or seemingly uncanny settings or deliberately mislabelling them, ‘to make the most everyday objects shriek aloud’. Through his visual and verbal enigmas, Magritte rendered the familiar unsettling and alien, raising questions about the nature of representation and reality.
The weekly magazine Vendredi, in which our frontispiece, ‘Frou-Frous’, was also published in August 1951, is arguably one of the most unusual periodicals ever produced by the Belgian Surrealists. The driving force behind the undertaking was Paul Colinet, who collaborated with René Magritte, Pierre Alechinsky and Marcel Mariën. Written entirely by hand and never issued in reproduced form, the magazine was produced weekly for almost two years, from 11 November 1949 to 5 October 1951. Every Friday, Paul Colinet sent the magazine to his nephew, the artist Robert Willems, who was then living in the Belgian Congo. Each issue comprised between two and ten pages, resulting in a total of more than 100 individual fascicles. Every issue was entirely handwritten and existed as a unique copy, making each sheet particularly valuable.
The magazine’s contributors clearly delighted in challenging their reader with the kinds of material one might expect to encounter in a ‘normal’, conventional newspaper or magazine: crossword puzzles that left nothing to be desired; rebuses supposedly easier than their more difficult counterparts; riddles; charades; comic strips whose captions were endlessly recycled, rather like cards in a game of rummy; classified advertisements; job vacancies; schoolboy jokes in the Walloon dialect of Namur; short plays; fictitious art reviews; reports of hot jazz concerts; musical scores for an oversized orchestra and choir; and mathematical puzzles. All found their way into the magazine’s pages.
‘Frou-Frous d’éborgnements d’alcools pour retrousser un Jardin dogmatique boudeur’ depicts a cloud-like, puffing face with extravagantly swollen cheeks resembling luxuriant volutes, its bulbous nose crowned by a small tree. The phrase might be loosely rendered as ‘Alcoholic frou-frous to cheer up a sulky, dogmatic garden’. ‘Frou-frou’ is a French onomatopoeic word that can denote the characteristic rustling or swishing of silk dresses and ladies’ petticoats, as well as playful frills and embellishments, or a person who is both vain and exuberantly pleasure-loving. In a world so often governed by reason and logic, Surrealism invites us to embrace the enigmatic and the imaginative, and to take delight in the very impossibility of resolving things into a single, definitive meaning.
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
(Lessines 1898–1967 Brussels)
Frou-Frous, 1951, signed, dated and numbered Magritte 17 août 1951 no. 93, colour pencil on paper, 29.5 x 22 cm, framed
The Comité René Magritte, Brussels, has confirmed the authenticity of the work. The certificate is currently in preparation.
Provenance:
Collection Isy Brachot, Brussels
Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (by inheritance to the current owner)
Exhibited:
Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Tokyo; Le Musée National d‘Art Moderne, Kyoto; Le Mainchi Shimbun, Rétrospective. René Magritte, May-September 1971, exhib. cat. Tokyo 1971, no. 91 with full page b/w-ill. (label)
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels, Delvaux Gnoli Magritte. Œuvres originales, 8 November – 14 December 1974
Literature:
Galerie Isy Brachot, Brussels, Hyperréalisme: Maîtres Américains et Européens, Brussels 1974, cat. no. 39
Xavier Canonne (Ed.), Vendredi: une correspondance surréaliste: een surrealistische briefwisseling, Antwerp 2020, p. 1013, p. 901 with full page b/w-ill., p. 981 with full page col.-ill.
Green apples, melons and clouds: at first glance, these remain among the most instantly recognisable motifs in René Magritte’s art. The artist created a body of work in which precisely such everyday objects suddenly appeared strange and unfamiliar, placing them in unexpected or seemingly uncanny settings or deliberately mislabelling them, ‘to make the most everyday objects shriek aloud’. Through his visual and verbal enigmas, Magritte rendered the familiar unsettling and alien, raising questions about the nature of representation and reality.
The weekly magazine Vendredi, in which our frontispiece, ‘Frou-Frous’, was also published in August 1951, is arguably one of the most unusual periodicals ever produced by the Belgian Surrealists. The driving force behind the undertaking was Paul Colinet, who collaborated with René Magritte, Pierre Alechinsky and Marcel Mariën. Written entirely by hand and never issued in reproduced form, the magazine was produced weekly for almost two years, from 11 November 1949 to 5 October 1951. Every Friday, Paul Colinet sent the magazine to his nephew, the artist Robert Willems, who was then living in the Belgian Congo. Each issue comprised between two and ten pages, resulting in a total of more than 100 individual fascicles. Every issue was entirely handwritten and existed as a unique copy, making each sheet particularly valuable.
The magazine’s contributors clearly delighted in challenging their reader with the kinds of material one might expect to encounter in a ‘normal’, conventional newspaper or magazine: crossword puzzles that left nothing to be desired; rebuses supposedly easier than their more difficult counterparts; riddles; charades; comic strips whose captions were endlessly recycled, rather like cards in a game of rummy; classified advertisements; job vacancies; schoolboy jokes in the Walloon dialect of Namur; short plays; fictitious art reviews; reports of hot jazz concerts; musical scores for an oversized orchestra and choir; and mathematical puzzles. All found their way into the magazine’s pages.
‘Frou-Frous d’éborgnements d’alcools pour retrousser un Jardin dogmatique boudeur’ depicts a cloud-like, puffing face with extravagantly swollen cheeks resembling luxuriant volutes, its bulbous nose crowned by a small tree. The phrase might be loosely rendered as ‘Alcoholic frou-frous to cheer up a sulky, dogmatic garden’. ‘Frou-frou’ is a French onomatopoeic word that can denote the characteristic rustling or swishing of silk dresses and ladies’ petticoats, as well as playful frills and embellishments, or a person who is both vain and exuberantly pleasure-loving. In a world so often governed by reason and logic, Surrealism invites us to embrace the enigmatic and the imaginative, and to take delight in the very impossibility of resolving things into a single, definitive meaning.
Specialist: Dr. Petra Maria Schäpers
