Magritte intuited photography* to a greater degree than most of the medium's masters. imagine this painting surrounded by 16 photobooth pictures of the Surrealists (Dali, Magritte & Max Ernst amoung them) in shirt & tie with their eyes closed. Published in La Revolution surrealiste, 12 (15 December 1929) the whole piece is entitled (for those of us fortunante enough to not speak french) : I Do Not See the [Woman] Hidden in the Forest.
there is some thing(s) (always) in the refusal.
the repetition of the closed eyes. the ease of the process. the height of the gesture.
we do not know what we are supposed to be looking at.
the naked & bashfull woman or the blinded men that surround her.
who is the subject of this portrait : the artist or the muse ?
( the relationship a phool's phrase )
has he gone blind from his own creation or the thought there of.
there is something impotent & powerless in this painting.
( a fact most photographers deny )
do we see that which we represent ? or do they transmute themselves. . .
is there a 'they' of which to speak or merely more 'me' than we have room for ( ? )
another picture ( a latter thought ) :
here we learn more through Magritte's spontaneous photographic refusal. the muse & the artist become one in this self portrait. the mastibatory narcissim of ages : an admission of being an open book th(r)ough turned back. a picture ( ultimatly ) taken for his own bemusement. yet, he has thought hard of representation & the real that photography can nt deny. what does a picture like this supposed to mean !? we learn : we are able to understand more through puzzles & fragments than a completely stated portrait. he teaches us that we learn nothing about a person by looking at their cold objectified face, no matter how expressive they can be. the truth lies in momentary decisions & (seemingly) arbitrary props. the lens flattens that which the human has made round. we can see more in our mistakes than in our rehearsed takes.
thanks magritte for sticking to painting but disseminating yr truth through all the arts.
*usually when i use the word 'photography' i am refering specifically to the 'study of light' as i have come to understand it.
