Magritte at SFMOMA

I'd forgotten how small so many of the actual paintings are, compared to the size of their impact; Magritte compressed images to monumental scale.

What a pleasure to stand in front of one of them and take the grand world tour wherever the words and pictures lead.

On one particular afternoon at SFMOMA Magritte's words and pictures compel a young man with red hair and a small red goatee to sit in front of a Magritte for as long as fifteen minutes, staring into the painting, assuring Magritte his future, before moving on to another painting.

The titles of Magritte's paintings are often poems, as the titles of Wallace Stevens' poems are often poems. Stevens title's were so often poems that he supposedly said, "one has to be careful about putting too much poetry into a title."

A Magritte painting is essentially a philosophical painting--(perhaps the first philosophical painting in art history? I don't know, maybe!).

A Magritte painting is painting philosophized.

Magritte's a pretty good painter--he can make a rock look like a rock representationally--but he's a great artist, though I wish I could think of a word beside, great. 

Many questions are asked in a Magritte painting, and then the questions themselves start asking questions.

I've read enough to know that Magritte is not held in high regard by many art writers and by artists themselves. Yet to me even the obviousness of his painting is compelling: that one can somehow be made to feel comfortable amidst disturbance and psychological disruption. 

The paintings were born of the trauma of two World Wars when apples and cigarettes were scarce. 

There's no need for biography; the biography is in the art.

Rene Magritte, The Fifth Season: May 19-October 28, 2018, SFMOMA, 151 3rd St. San Francisco.