CARISSA MARSH
A&E Editor
With clouds on the floor and freeways on the ceiling, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s current exhibit makes visitors feel like they have fallen down the rabbit hole into a confusing yet entertaining world of surrealism and warped reality.
“Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images,” literally turns the world upside down, forcing visitors to look at reality — and visual art — in a new way. The exhibit will be at the LACMA until March 4.
According to LACMA, the show is the first major exhibition to explore the impact of Belgian surrealist artist Rene Magritte on United States and European artists working since the 1950s.
According to Senior Curator Stephanie Barron, the goal of the exhibit is “getting people to look at Magritte’s work and the work of other contemporary artists through a fresh lens.”
The exhibit features 68 paintings and drawings by Magritte as well as an equal number of works in various media by 31 contemporary artists including John Baldessari, Robert Gober, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. These accompanying pieces both directly and indirectly reference the work of Magritte in style or subject.
The flipped world installation is thanks to the creative genius of conceptual artist Baldessari, who lives and works nearby in Santa Monica.
While the LACMA typically uses an architect for exhibit installations, they decided to use an artist because “we thought it would expand people’s appreciation of the exhibition,” Barron said. “It provides a surrealistic environment for the works.”
Baldessari’s installation design creates a lighthearted and fun atmosphere through which to view Magritte’s work, but it also parallels the Belgian artist’s tendency to distort perception and reality. By having a fellow artist direct the installation of the exhibit, the LACMA has given the public a rare chance to see one artist through the eyes of another.
“I felt that his appreciation and sensitivity to the issues would be fresh and interesting,” Barron said of Baldessari.
The surreal experience starts at the entry point of the gallery, as visitors actually walk through a large-scaled rendition of the door in Magritte’s “The Unexpected Answer.” The ghostly cut-out in the doorway leads guests into the first gallery, carpeted in a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds — a common theme in Magritte’s works. One look up reveals a ceiling covered with a dizzying wallpaper of intersecting freeways. Things get stranger, as one cannot help but notice that upon the floor lays a huge six-foot long cigar, crafted by Gober using wood, paint, paper and real tobacco.
Another interesting element of Baldessari’s installation is a nighttime scene of the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan that has been installed in a window, allowing light to come through the picture as well as the shadows of passing cars driving on the street outside the museum.
The persistence of the Magritte-themed installation can even be seen in the LACMA’s security guards who wear the same black bowler hats featured in many of Magritte’s veiled self-portraits.
Within the first gallery is the central work of the exhibit, Magritte’s 1929 painting “The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe),” for which the exhibition is also named. The piece is Magritte’s most well-known word-and-image painting, depicting a realistic image of a pipe above the phrase “This is not a pipe,” written in French. Magritte is most famous for exploring the relationship between images and language as well as challenging the idea of interpretation.
Magritte’s work can mostly be characterized by detailed and precise representations of objects. But it is the contradictory circumstances in which he places these objects that contribute to the mystery of his works. If people feel like much of what they are seeing is random and confusing, they are not at fault. Many of Magritte’s earlier works juxtapose unrelated objects. Later, he focused on shocking viewers by revealing the hidden affinities between objects.
Barron agreed the works presented in the exhibit can be hard for visitors to interpret because the artists are creating new meanings through “the conjunction of images that don’t always go together, or the conjunction of words and images that don’t always match.” She said that the pieces on display sometimes have a direct relationship, but more often there is only “a subtle suggestion of a connection.”
Many of Magritte’s works show his delight with contradictions, such as rocks defying gravity. The influence of Magritte’s experiments with the appearance of weightlessness is evident in the exhibit, especially in Jeff Koons’ piece called “Rabbit,” which looks like a light inflatable bunny balloon, but it is actually quite heavy as it has been cast in stainless steel.
Still, some of the artists’ works may seem illogical — one prime example being Magritte’s “The Listening Room,” which shows a larger-than-life green apple filling a room — making it difficult for viewers to find meaning in the piece and challenging what they consider art.
Part of this challenge of reality is accomplished by Magritte and other artists shifting the scale and materials used in their works to change meaning and create a sense of the uncanny — making objects or situations seem menacing that usually are not.
In “Personal Values,” Magritte once again shows a domestic room, but this time it is filled with of variety of oversized objects, including a comb perched upon a bed and leaning against the wall. Artist Vija Celmins took Magritte’s painting to the next level by creating a six-foot tall replication of the comb. Another example of shifting scale is Magritte’s “Time Transfixed,” which shows a steam train coming out of a fireplace. The realistic and precise painting presents a conundrum for viewers trying to reconcile the difference in scale.
In 1948, Magritte departed from his usual realist style to try his hand at “painting badly,” a stunt that nearly ruined his career. Called sunlit surrealism, his work during this period featured brightly colored, cartoon-like pieces that Magritte painted as badly and quickly as possible to shake up society’s expectations of what art should be. This gaudy style is clearly displayed in “The Stop,” which shows a man answering nature’s call on the side of the road under an orange tree and a plaid sky.
Despite his short-lived “bad” paintings episode, Magritte’s work has had a profound effect on contemporary art as well as pop culture. His mind-bending images have been seen in advertisements and on album covers.
In some ways, Magritte was a man before his time. Luckily for lovers of contemporary art, however, the unrestricted and untraditional artist understood the value of turning the world upside down every once in awhile.
“It’s a way to think freshly about a major twentieth century figure,” Barron said.
Tickets for the Magritte exhibit cost $14 on weekdays and $17 on weekends for students with a valid ID. For more information, visit the Web site at lacma.org.
01-18-2007
