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Lot Essay
According to Magritte, "The German occupation marked the turning point in my art. Before the war, my paintings expressed anxiety, but the experiences of war have taught me that what matters in art is to express charm. I live in a very disagreeable world and my work is meant as a counter-offensive" (quoted in S. Gablik, op. cit., p. 146).
His first attack consisted of a series of sunlit paintings, many in the style of late Renoir; these resulted in derision from the avant-garde (Breton excommunicated him from the Paris Surrealists). Magritte nevertheless launched a second attack. In a five-week period at the end of 1947 and beginning of 1948, he made a group of paintings for an exhibition at the Galerie du Faubourg in Paris. Conceived as a riposte to the French Surrealists, these pictures were rapidly and confidently painted in a new style. Magritte called these works 'vache' paintings, a name intended to evoke ironically the fauves. Louis Scutenaire wrote in the essay for the exhibition catalogue, Les pieds dans le plat (Putting One's Foot in It), "Everything Magritte shows you is for your refreshment, but above all for your entertainment." Magritte engineered a definitive break with Paris, discovering a light, mocking, unpretentious art that had eluded him with the Renoir-esque pictures. The new works combined facility, banality and satiric eroticism. Magritte declared them to have "a complete lack of belief in content and form." He wrote to Scutenaire of Paul Eluard's skeptical reaction, saying that Eluard "...'likes' my exhibition, but would prefer to buy 'the Magritte of yore.' He wouldn't like to have the exhibited paintings 'on his walls,' even though he likes them (no doubt because we no longer look at paintings once they are on the wall)" (ibid., p. 150).
None of the works sold at the Galerie du Faubourg exhibition and Magritte left them with friends in Paris. He wrote to Scutenaire, "There are a few visitors at the exhibition (the young girls have a tendency to laugh, but they restrain themselves because it is inappropriate in an art gallery)... I should like to persist even more strongly with the 'approach' of my experiment in Paris--it's my tendency anyway: slow suicide. But there's Georgette to consider and the disgust I feel at being 'sincere'" (ibid., p. 153).
For this painting Magritte sent a provisional title to the gallery taken from a recently released Charlie Chaplin film: "Monsieur Verdoux--titre un peu suspect remplacer par mieux et accepter par la galerie" ("Monsieur Verdoux--a rather dubious title to be replaced by something better for acceptance by the gallery"). It was replaced by the doubtful word itself ('suspect'), and might be linked to a 1945 Charles Laughton film The Suspect. This painting remained with Magritte until it was purchased by Harry Torczyner in 1961.
His first attack consisted of a series of sunlit paintings, many in the style of late Renoir; these resulted in derision from the avant-garde (Breton excommunicated him from the Paris Surrealists). Magritte nevertheless launched a second attack. In a five-week period at the end of 1947 and beginning of 1948, he made a group of paintings for an exhibition at the Galerie du Faubourg in Paris. Conceived as a riposte to the French Surrealists, these pictures were rapidly and confidently painted in a new style. Magritte called these works 'vache' paintings, a name intended to evoke ironically the fauves. Louis Scutenaire wrote in the essay for the exhibition catalogue, Les pieds dans le plat (Putting One's Foot in It), "Everything Magritte shows you is for your refreshment, but above all for your entertainment." Magritte engineered a definitive break with Paris, discovering a light, mocking, unpretentious art that had eluded him with the Renoir-esque pictures. The new works combined facility, banality and satiric eroticism. Magritte declared them to have "a complete lack of belief in content and form." He wrote to Scutenaire of Paul Eluard's skeptical reaction, saying that Eluard "...'likes' my exhibition, but would prefer to buy 'the Magritte of yore.' He wouldn't like to have the exhibited paintings 'on his walls,' even though he likes them (no doubt because we no longer look at paintings once they are on the wall)" (ibid., p. 150).
None of the works sold at the Galerie du Faubourg exhibition and Magritte left them with friends in Paris. He wrote to Scutenaire, "There are a few visitors at the exhibition (the young girls have a tendency to laugh, but they restrain themselves because it is inappropriate in an art gallery)... I should like to persist even more strongly with the 'approach' of my experiment in Paris--it's my tendency anyway: slow suicide. But there's Georgette to consider and the disgust I feel at being 'sincere'" (ibid., p. 153).
For this painting Magritte sent a provisional title to the gallery taken from a recently released Charlie Chaplin film: "Monsieur Verdoux--titre un peu suspect remplacer par mieux et accepter par la galerie" ("Monsieur Verdoux--a rather dubious title to be replaced by something better for acceptance by the gallery"). It was replaced by the doubtful word itself ('suspect'), and might be linked to a 1945 Charles Laughton film The Suspect. This painting remained with Magritte until it was purchased by Harry Torczyner in 1961.