René Magritte in Hong Kong: show of personal photos, films shines light on ‘mischievous’ artist

The name René Magritte is likely to conjure images of a pipe, a bowler hat or a lashless eye filled with a blue sky and clouds. A new exhibition of more than 100 photographs and films from Magritte’s personal collection offers an alternative way of understanding the man behind the symbols.

Of course, to even think that you can understand the real Magritte from the images of the artist, his wife Georgette and his family and friends seems disloyal to the Belgian surrealist’s personal philosophy. After all, he used his art to destabilise links between appearance and meaning.

Artist opens Playboy-inspired ‘hotel’ exhibition to Hong Kong guests

The blue sky in the eye is, as he called it, The False Mirror (1929). A picture of a pipe is accompanied by the words “This is not a pipe” in The Treachery of Images (1929). In front of the camera, he play acted, sometimes keeping his eyes shut, as if denying others a glimpse of the world that he alone saw.

It is hard not to see a mischievous personality coming through from the 130 or so images in “René Magritte: The Revealing Image”, a touring exhibition that has just opened in ArtisTree.

Xavier Canonne, director of Musée de la Photographie in Brussels and curator of the exhibition, included straightforward, biographical photos from the Magritte family albums, as well as works that could be considered works of art in their own right (though the two categories sometimes overlap).

There are pictures of young Magritte with his two brothers and parents – his mother drowned herself in a river when he was 14. There are photographs of him and his wife, Georgette – alone, with friends and fellow artists in Brussels and Paris, and with their dogs, a succession of black and white Pomeranians.

David Hockney’s life in painting: stunning retrospective on the artist’s career showcases his restless talent