William Valerio, Ph.D.,
Curator, MuseumNetwork.com

Charly Herscovici,
President, Succession René Magritte

Whether it's an exhibition in a museum or gallery, an important sale, or even a magazine article, nothing much happens concerning the work of Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte (1898-1967) without the participation of Mr. Charly Herscovici. The unofficial, adopted "grandson" of Mme. Georgette Magritte, the artist's wife, Herscovici was bequeathed control of copyright to the artist's works when Mme. Magritte passed away.

With this privilege came an obligation--which has become a labor of love--to represent the continuing best interests of the artist in a varied and ever-changing array of responsibilities. By creating the "Magritte Foundation," Herscovici has provided for the mechanisms by which works of art can be authenticated (it is believed that Magritte produced about 1,200 works of art over his lifetime). On the occasion of my interview, this May 15, 2000, Herscovici was visiting New York to attend the big auctions of modern art because an important work by Magritte was on the block at Sotheby's (it sold for $2,000,000). Over lunch at the Carlysle Hotel, Herscovici explained to me that he follows the auctions in order to keep track of paintings; he can then help art historians and curators when they are organizing exhibitions. Case in point: Herscovici was instrumental in the solidification of loans to "Magritte," a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work on view from May 5 through September 5, 2000, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMa). What follows is an exclusive interview.

Magritte painted from the 1920s through the 1960s and his works are increasingly popular. What is it about Magritte's work that will make the exhibition in San Francisco a blockbuster?

Magritte developed an alphabet of images, changing the roles of the ordinary objects and things he painted in relation to their expected context. Magritte's great talent was to help people dream about the world they live in, and this is as current a need today as it was in the 1920s, when he painted his first surrealist images.

Has this contributed to the popularity of Magritte's style with advertisers today?

Yes. Magritte was a poet of objects and he could create a startling drama or an amazing intrigue around a green apple, a pipe, or chair. It is this drama of objects that advertisers try to so desperately to capture. Magritte was a master of drama, and in fact he worked in advertising early in his career. I am hoping that one day soon there can be an exhibition of the advertisements created by Magritte. He also experimented a bit with film.

Let's please talk about the exhibition in San Francisco. What is the exhibition about? Does it have a point of view about the meaning of Magritte's work?

Personal Values, 1952 The exhibition is a retrospective and it tells the story of Magritte's art from beginning to end. The objective of the curators was to choose the paintings that best tell the story of Magritte's career and to cover the major types of images in his repertoire. Although it was initially organized by Steingrim Laursen, director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen, Denmark, the SFMoMA was prompted to host this exhibition because they recently acquired one of Magritte's great masterpieces, Personal Values(1952), which was purchased for them as a $7,100,000 gift (a record price for the artist). The curators in San Francisco added to the original exhibition by obtaining several loans from American institutions of works that had not been part of the exhibition when it was mounted previously in Copenhagen and Edinborough.

Can you tell me more about Personal Values? As the bearer of the Magritte torch, can you tell us if there are personal fears, fantasies, or dreams encoded in this work? What about the painting is personal?

The Son of Man, 1964 The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a very lucky museum because they now own what I believe to be one of Magritte's most beautiful and important works of art. First you must know, however, that the titles of Magritte's painting are often irrelevant to the paintings themselves. Many titles were suggested to Magritte by friends in weekly salons that they held on Saturdays& . But that said, yes, the comb, the soap, the bed, the room might all have been objects owned by Magritte, and they were probably his own personal objects, but that they were his possessions is unimportant. In Magritte's painting, they are no longer utilitarian objects. In changing their scale relative to the room (and with the sky as an enveloping wallpaper) they are lifted out of the realm of the personal. Magritte was concerned with a poetry of objects; he makes us see the objects we know best in a way that we have never seen them before. He never wanted his art to be interpreted as a strong personal statement; his brushwork, for example, is invisible, a non-element in the paintings.

Are there any other works that reveal some aspect of Magritte's personality, or to the contrary, are his paintings representative of a mood or ethos that is completely alien to his personality?

The Listening Room, 1952 I like to think that Magritte inserted himself into a painting titled The Son of Man (1964). When you look at this painting what do you see? (I answer: a man whose face is obscured by a floating green apple.) But then, if you look carefully, you will see that one of the figure's eyes is staring back at you, the viewer, from around the side of the apple. This little detail is crucial, and many people don't see it.This was Magritte, a smart reflexive thinker, a poet of an artist who expressed interiorized intellectual moods, who expressed himself with a manipulation of images. Here he looks back at us, at his audience, an observer of all that happens, an observer of even the way we look at his paintings. He was a private, quiet, unpretentious man who cared little for the greater glories that so many of his surrealist colleagues lived for. He also had a great sense of humor and an appreciation of absurdity. A painting like the Listening Room (1952) [where an apple is made to consume the space of an entire room] creates visual surprise out of an astonishing, absurdist combination of images.

What about social engagement or politics. The surrealists are known for their anarchist, leftist politics. Does this have a place in Magritte's work?

The Dominion of Light, 1952 Magritte didn't engage with politics except during the Second World War. At that time he created an image in which a well-known Belgian collaborationist looks at himself in the mirror and beholds an image of Hitler. But aside from this painting, Magritte's art is not about politics; it is, however, about a visual poetry of everyday life. His only politics (if you are looking for politics) might be through the creation of an awareness of the thinking process. The Dominion of Light (1952), from the Menil Collection in Houston, is another, most important painting [currently on view in San Francisco]. Here Magritte shows a dark street and a bright sky, and this was not an unusual visual appearance of the city at a specific time of day. Magritte's paintings derive [their] power from the fact that people don't really take in the visual appearances of the things around them.

Can you tell me about Golconda (1953)? I have to ask, what was Magritte's fascination with this rain of men?

Golconda, 1953 Magritte was fascinated by the seductiveness of images. Ordinarily, you see a picture of something and you believe in it, you are seduced by it; you take its honesty for granted. But Magritte knew that representations of things can lie. These images of men aren't men, just pictures of them, so they don't have to follow any rules. This painting is fun, but it also makes us aware of the falsity of representation.

The apple on which Charly Herscovici wrote "This is an apple"At this point in the interview, Herscovici decided to make his point with a tangible example. At the table was an elegant fruit dish, piled high with green apples of the sort, we commented, that could have been Magritte's inspiration many a time. Herscovici grasped a fruit and began to write on its skin as only the anointed heir of the artist may: "This is an apple." This was to make clear Magritte's maxim: nothing else, no painting or photograph of an object (the apple or anything else), is, in matter of fact, that object. Only an apple is an apple; every image is a manipulated reflection of appearances invented for one reason or another.

Here we had traveled full circle in our interview. Why is Magritte still relevant today? Because more than ever, in today's digital world of manipulated images, we have to dissect the form and content of the images that inhabit our world. Magritte realized this long ago.

Read More About Magritte

Magritte: Preface by Gary Garrels
(The catalog of the exhibition currently on view at the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.)

Click Here for More Books About Magritte and surrealism

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