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Lot Essay
An outsized plate and glass dwarf the table and fruit-bowl in a sunny, plain room. The plate in fact takes up most of the rear wall. Les valeurs personelles ('Personal Values') is one of the rare occasions in Magritte's oeuvre where the title can be interpreted as describing the content of the picture - many consider the various proportions of the objects on display to reflect the personal values and importance attached to each.
Les valeurs personelles is one of several variations Magritte executed on the theme of the out-sized object. One of the most famous went by the same title as the present work but the room, whose walls were made of sky, contained many objects in varying proportions. When Magritte sent that work to his dealer Alexander Iolas in New York, the latter wrote back that the picture had made him feel ill. This prompted one of the most important of Magritte's writings on his own work, for he justified and explained the painting in a long letter. In the explanation, equally relevant to the present picture, Magritte wrote that the colossal objects, all of which are in some manner utilitarian, are here made grotesque through their proportions. The plate and glass in the present work are divested of their ability to perform their simple functions by the fact that they have been created on a gigantic, pointless scale. Each object has therefore lost its 'social character' and defies its role as a symbol in society because it is now without purpose:'it has become an object of useless luxury, which may, as you say, leave the spectator 'feeling helpless' or even make him ill. Well, this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture. A picture which is really alive should make the spectator feel ill.' (Magritte, letter to Iolas, 24 October, 1952, quoted in D. Sylvester, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. III, p. 192).
Les valeurs personelles is one of several variations Magritte executed on the theme of the out-sized object. One of the most famous went by the same title as the present work but the room, whose walls were made of sky, contained many objects in varying proportions. When Magritte sent that work to his dealer Alexander Iolas in New York, the latter wrote back that the picture had made him feel ill. This prompted one of the most important of Magritte's writings on his own work, for he justified and explained the painting in a long letter. In the explanation, equally relevant to the present picture, Magritte wrote that the colossal objects, all of which are in some manner utilitarian, are here made grotesque through their proportions. The plate and glass in the present work are divested of their ability to perform their simple functions by the fact that they have been created on a gigantic, pointless scale. Each object has therefore lost its 'social character' and defies its role as a symbol in society because it is now without purpose:'it has become an object of useless luxury, which may, as you say, leave the spectator 'feeling helpless' or even make him ill. Well, this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture. A picture which is really alive should make the spectator feel ill.' (Magritte, letter to Iolas, 24 October, 1952, quoted in D. Sylvester, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. III, p. 192).