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Tribute

Of this time, ours, considered to be of great change, but where freedom is faltering

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
Person cited René Magritte

Description

Manuscript by André Breton paying tribute to Magritte's painting, written at Saint-Cirq on 5 September 1961.

For almost a year Magritte had been asking for and hoped to receive this celebratory text that was finally completed for the painter's exhibition at the Obelisk Gallery in London. Breton emphasises the rigour of a work that builds a ‘semantic bridge’ between literal and figurative meanings. The painter’s essential contribution to surrealism is also recognized, Breton seeing his work as a refutation directed against the sort of painting that gave ‘signs’ too great a capacity of anticipation over what was ‘signified’. Let’s be clear: an abstract painting has only a visual reference point. For the poet the return to the past is once again an occasion to engage with contemporary debates. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscript signed, Saint-Cirq-la-Popie, 5 September 1961
1 page in-4° handwritten, titled, dated and signed in ink by Breton of a text written in tribute to René Magritte, with erasures and corrections.
‘...There is no artist today whose work represents a more exemplary break with these limitations and stagnant formulas than René Magritte... Magritte’s figurative propensity is much greater than is recognised: it applies on two levels of which only the most modest is currently understood... Magritte’s totally original and capital intervention is placed there - to awaken us to their latent life by an appeal to the fluctuation of relations they maintain... Surrealism owes him one of its earliest - and most recent - dimensions.’ [sale catalogue, 2003]

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson.

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, III, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, pages 673 à 676, Notes p. 1343-1344.