1954 was a year in which generations met. In a New York gallery the young artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg saw an exhibition of word-image paintings by RenĂ© Magritte. The famous painting âLa Trahison des images (Ceci nâest pas une pipe)â (âThe Treachery of Images [This is not a Pipe]â) from 1929 was also on display.
Johns and Rauschenberg subsequently confirmed their interest in Magritte with purchases of his works. Magritteâs philosophical-conceptual approach to image and language influenced certain contemporary artists of the post-War period, and in Jasper Johns, Vija Celmins and Ed Ruscha it is easy to see how a generation of American artists looked to Magritte for inspiration.
You canât smoke Magritteâs pipe
Jasper Johns, who was born in 1930, and RenĂ© Magritte met in person in 1965 on the occasion of Magritteâs retrospective at New Yorkâs MoMA. Both artists, writes art historian Roberta Bernstein, were depicting everyday things in an unexpected way, which prompts the observer to rethink the apparently self-evident. In his artistic work, Johns makes use of things that would normally be overlooked or would not merit any close observation. He is known, for example, for his paintings of digits, flags and targets, but also for his canvas works that incorporate real objects.
Jasper Johns, Image via pbs.org
Jasper Johns is sometimes compared to RenĂ© Magritte, but there are no obviously direct references to Magritte in his works. Neither has he really cited Magritte as a role model. Yet it is possible to view Johnsâ pictorial studies on the relationship between seeing and thinking as a link between the two artists. In a way Johns even radicalizes Magritteâs approach. âYou canât smoke Magritteâs painted pipe, but you could throw a dart at a Johns target,â writes Leo Steinberg. Jasper Johns therefore blurs the dividing line between object and image. âIs it a flag, or is it a painting?â asked Max Imdahl in 1969 with regard to Johnsâ images of flags.
Stillness and unsettling image motifs
The relationship between image and language is a broad field in which Jasper Johns and RenĂ© Magritte both operate. Magritte often incorporates text into his images to unsettle the observer. The sentence âCeci nâest pas une pipeâ (âThis is not a pipeâ) is the prime example of this. In a painting from his series âLa Clef des songesâ (âThe Interpretation of Dreamsâ) from 1935, Magritte labels four objects with unrelated terms. Hence, under the depiction of a horseâs head, the observer reads âthe door.â Jasper Johns, meanwhile, tends to label the objects in his paintings âcorrectlyâ in order to substantiate their authenticity, as it were.
The artist Vija Celmins was born in 1938 in Latvia, but lives in New York. She became known for her meticulous, objective and generally monochrome paintings and sketches. During the 1960s Celmins began working on small-format âportraitsâ of everyday objects from her studio â such as a hotplate, a heater or a lamp. According to Sara Cochran, Celmins likes the stillness and the immobility of Magritteâs paintings, as well as the unsettling image motifs. She also appreciates his play on two- and three-dimensionality and his images of objects.Â
Sometimes Vija Celmins makes direct reference to Magritteâs works. Inspired, amongst other things, by his painting âLes valeurs personnellesâ (âPersonal Valuesâ) from 1952, which shows certain greatly enlarged utility objects in a room with cloud-patterned wallpaper, Celmins built an almost two-meter-high comb in 1970. The comb object âUntitled (Comb)â developed as part of an intensive, two-year production process alongside other oversized objects.
Cowboy Magritte in Hollywood
Magritteâs juxtaposition of the real and the imaginary interests Celmins. âHe had numerous ideas about the real and the imaginary, which he illustrated in a clever way. Magritte made it clear that things in paintings are not real.â Celminsâ graphite sketch âUntitled (Cloud with Wire)â from 1969 plays with the idea of the trompe lâoeil. We see a cloudy sky and a wire that appears to contrast with it. The wire casts a shadow â also sketched â against the sky. It points to its two-dimensional character; after all it is âonlyâ an image, an illusion.
Vija Celmins, Image via astrangershand.com
However, not all seemingly obvious artistic parallels stand up to more precise examination. Take the work of the artist Ed Ruscha, who was born in 1937 and lives in Culver City, southern California. The frequent, conceptual use of text in his paintings, the isolation and enlargement of individual motifs and the mood his images convey could mislead one into thinking that Ruscha was inspired by RenĂ© Magritteâs works. Ed Ruscha is a kind of âCowboy Magritte in Hollywood,â wrote one critic in 1971, suggesting that Ruschaâs creative work combines Pop with Surrealism.
The struggle within great images
Ed Ruscha rejected this categorization in a discussion with the curator Lynn Zelevansky: âI like Magritteâs work, but he wasnât a great influence on me.â His more profound inspiration came from Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters and Max Ernst, he claimed. Magritte and Ruscha met in person in Venice in 1967. The gallerist Alexander Iolas represented both artists at the time. Ruscha describes Magritte as a âfriendly, pleasant manâ and an âabsolute gentleman. His prosaic, ânormalâ lifestyle, together with his images, make Magritte extremely interesting.âÂ
Ruschaâs favorite picture by Magritte is âLa DurĂ©e poignardĂ©eâ (âTime Transfixedâ) from 1938. It shows a bare and seemingly anonymous section of a bourgeois living room. A steam engine protrudes â or rather floats â from the white fireplace that dominates the picture. On the one hand we see a ânon-reality,â Ed Ruscha says, as trains donât come out of fireplaces in everyday life. Yet the smoke emitted by the locomotive is sucked in by the fireplace, and that represents a realistic element. âThe struggle between non-reality and reality in painting is the sort of battle that makes it a great image.â
Ed Ruscha, Image via tomorrowstarted.com