René Magritte was fond of jokes. There are several in René Magritte (Or: The Rule of Metaphor), a small but choice exhibition at Luxembourg & Dayan, 2 Savile Row W1 (until 12 May), that includes numerous variations, accomplished and disturbing, on similar ideas to his famous ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ painting.
‘L’usage de la parole VI’ (1928) contains two amorphous brown patches resembling mud or merde or molten chocolate. They are labelled as if in a scientific diagram, one with the word ‘miroir’, the other ‘corps de femme’. It’s true that Magritte could be repetitive, but his early paintings are beautiful, and the humour had a serious point. We make a cosy world with words and signs, he seems to say, but beyond those is meaninglessness: the void. On one side of ‘Le genre nocturne’ (1928) there is a naked woman, on the other an egg-shaped hole, as if punched through frescoed plaster, revealing a blank cracked wall.
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