René
Magritte
Magritte and
Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art
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The exhibition is enough of a showing.
Greats, near-greats and misses attend like the gallery in a Picasso tauromachia. Lichtenstein’s self-portrait is
grand and serene, like the works of Johns. Salle, Kelley, Koons and Ray are
not (Charles Ray) in any capacity but tribute, and that goes for Barbara
Kruger, too. Lesser lights are thrown than these, even. It is no matter, even if Le galet (1948) is translated as The Pebble.
Light works of Ruscha appease the heavier, there is a Baldessari. The
inexhaustible variety of Ceci n’est pas un pipe in successful variations is
answered and extended by Eleanor Antin with reference to Boots. The
wall commentary is not to the purpose. Which is to say, the museum is drifting
rather badly (and adhering to the taste of Eli Broad). Time Transfixed
(1938) gives the picture in spite of this, seconded by a Ruscha frolic on the
limitlessness of human speech, portrayed by a lit hearth. Personal Values (1952) comes to us in various forms, and the
unique masterpiece The Gigantesque Days (Les jours
gigantesques, 1928), to which the Education
Department ascribes a feminist historical and political outlook. The very
late Decalcomania (1966) posits a sky and clouds (elsewhere depicted
as a Curse) faced by a bowler-hatted man and his vacancy through a
curtain. The “vache”
paintings finally speak for themselves here. A local critic tried them in
absentia like a horse’s ass at the time of the Hammer Museum exhibition
some few years ago. They are like Dufy and the Fauves,
otherwise there are more varieties of Magritte to be conceived as
“bovine”. He paints successfully, he paints like a sign painter,
he tells us a tree is a guitar and a bird a glass goblet (The Stop,
1948). His precision is not of our making. |
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