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Artwork by Jan Ceuleers. Contributions by David Sylvester. ... Read more

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A study of Rene Magritte's basic philosophy and art, and particularly the development of his Surrealist style. ... Read more

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Great for beginner art lovers as well as experts-Fast read!
This book illustrates the reader through Magritte's life while giving background to the works. I read this book for fun and subsequently decided to study Magritte in school.It discusses surrealism as a whole as well asthe historical context of Magritte's work. This book got me hooked onMagritte!! ... Read more

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This book eloquently demonstrates that just as our human relationships change and develop over time, so do our ties to cherished works of art. Such works, with their overlays of perception and projection, exert a lasting influence on the psyche. In the first half of the book, Ellen Handler Spitz guides us through a maze of surreal paintings by Rene Magritte, with psychoanalytic thought as her beacon. In the second half she leads us on a kaleidoscopic journey through other "museums of the mind," where interrelated works in drama, film, cartoon art, poetry, and opera are illuminated and rediscovered. She analyzes a performance of Chekhov's "The Bear," revisits the 1970s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance from the perspective of the 1990s, reviews the film "Dead Poets Society," muses on the psychological themes in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, rereads a beloved sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and reconsiders "Antigone" to discover startling insights into the "twinship of good and evil." Her final chapter, "Music of Hope," looks directly at the power of art to shape the mind as well as to be shaped by it.Here Spitz reflects on the impact of the children's opera Brundibar, written by the Czech composer Hans Krasa in 1938 and performed many times by inmates of the Terezin concentration camp. ... Read more

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Richly informed...dazzling
"Interdisciplinary consideration of art is nothing new, but rarely has it been accomplished with the stunning breadth of this volume. A psychoanalyst and an expert in aesthetics for children, [she] offers art appreciation, history, and criticism richly informed by psychoanalytic, philosophic, and literary theory. . . . Spitz's writing and insights dazzle the imagination. If one learns to write in part by reading, this volume is a teacher to be treasured by all who value art and ideas." --from my review in the Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 31 (spring 1997), pp. 117-120. ... Read more

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"It begins with a stone falling, in the silence, vertically, immobile. It is falling from a great height, a meteor, a massive, compact, oblong block of rock, like a giant egg with a pocked, uneven surface."
The opening sentence of La Belle Captive introduces a dreamworld where the conventions of the traditional novel have been overthrown. Objects move through space without regard to laws of nature, characters move through the text in a maddening complex of events.
Published in 1975, Alain Robbe-Grillet's nouveau roman is illustrated with 77 paintings by René Magritte. Robbe-Grillet uses Magritte's paintings as pretexts for the novel, letting them generate themes for an imaginary discourse that parallels their imagery, glosses them, contradicts them. Simultaneously, he comments on Magritte's paintings while taking advantage of them to parade his own favorite themes: play, eroticism, subversion. Robbe-Grillet gives us a plot that frustrates expectations yet shares his pleasure with the mysterious and poetic in Magritte's art, and with the cultural myths that painter and novelist both parody.
The book includes a critical essay by novelist and translator Ben Stoltzfus on the pictorial and linguistic affinities between Magritte and Robbe-Grillet. Stoltzfus explores the image of the beautiful captive not only in her mythical and erotic dimensions, but also as a metaphor for the artistic process. ... Read more

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How could this possibly go wrong?
Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the greatest 20th century writers, and arguably the most important living one, teamed up with the paintings of Rene Magritte, another superlative figure in 20th century art.How couldthis possibly go wrong?For starters, the translation is not by RichardHoward, who translated The Voyeur, Jealousy, and basically all ofRobbe-Grillet's greatest works.No other translator has ever achieved theprecision, polish and perfection of Howard's efforts, which have the effectof making even Robbe-Grillet's most Gothic passages seem incomparablyelegant.

The other glaring problem with the book is the quality of thepainting reproductions.Printed in low-detail black and white, theyfunction schematically as narrative signposts, but convey little beauty intheir own right.Having viewed almost all the original paintings, I wouldsay that even full-color glossy reproductions generally fail to conveytheir surprising sensuousness, and that the reproductions in this book failmiserably.They're just plain ugly.

This is not a bad book, by anymeans, but it does fall very far short of what it might have been. ... Read more

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138 illus., 48 in full color. 167 pp. 9 5/8 x 12 3/4. Orig. $49.50. ... Read more

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Beautiful book with fast historical information:
A series of plates with page-long descriptions makes this book both beautiful and informative. Magritte's mysterious and thought-provoking paintings are captured in too-real color, and Hammacher's accompanyingcomments for each are both witty and insightful.It's hard to put down!There is also a nice biography of Magritte's life beginning the edition;one can feel like an expert easily.Finally, the large size and sturdycover contributes to why the book is one of my favorites for the coffeetable. ... Read more

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'Fine Realities.'
Harry Torczyner was Magritte's New York-based attorney, friend, and stateside promoter.Up until Magritte's unexpected death in 1967, Torczyner kept every letter that they exchanged (including replicas of his own responses) during their ten year correspondence.For this, readers should be exceptionally thankful: the letters turn out to be a brilliant and insightful collection.

Photographs, handwritten excerpts, and Magritte's working sketches are also interspersed throughout the anthology.Accompanying each letter is a French translation -- the language in which they were originally written -- and exact dates of composition are meticulously recorded.The highlights, of course, are Magritte's letters themselves, with his candid descriptions of inspiration, roadblocks, the creative process, and revelations about his own art and that of his contemporaries.

Not to be missed. ... Read more