Description
Book SynopsisThe first major biography of the pathbreaking, perpetually influential surrealist artist and iconoclast whose inspiration can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé—by the celebrated biographer of Cézanne and BraqueIn this thought-provoking life of René Magritte (1898-1967), Alex Danchev makes a compelling case for Magritte as the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world. Magritte’s surreal sensibility, deadpan melodrama, and fine-tuned outrageousness have become an inescapable part of our visual landscape, through such legendary works as
The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) and his celebrated iterations of
Man in a Bowler Hat. Danchev explores the path of this highly unconventional artist from his middle-class Belgian beginnings to the years during which he led a small, brilliant band of surrealists (and famously clashed with André Breton) to his first
