Art review: Magritte gives the tanks an unexpected nudge

the ”times literary supplement” the first Magritteutställningen in Finland and also the first real test for the newly built art museum Amos Rex, which spreads out in undulating underground halls during the funkisikonen the lasipalatsi building in Helsinki city centre.

Amos Rex closed while its old premises at Yrjönkatu a stone's throw away already in 2017 and opened the new in the fall. But the first exhibition of the japanese multimediakollektivet teamLab was a site-specific orgy of interactivity and digital effects, as a whole could fail. Öppningsutställningen was also a success with standing queues and over a quarter of a million visitors.

It is a far greater challenge to get a conventional exhibition with an art history major 1900-surrealist painter like René Magritte (1898-1967) work in the new, spectacular halls.

with Masi in the swiss Lugano and is based on a talk that Magritte himself was on his art in 1938. It is a pretty straight-forward and chronological presentation of the belgian surrealism superstar.

René Magritte ”La Chambre Découte” 1958 Photo: Amos Rex

With the early impression from dadaism, postkubism, futurism and early abstract art was the Magritte into the air after the completion of training at the beginning of the 20th century. But Magritte was not a painter with the orientation of the doctrinal movements. He is soft in the edges, for fnissig, for the poetic, for the mind of the really big gestures. Or to use his own words - for the philosophical.

magritte's career is full of aesthetic tvärvändningar. It makes him a sympathetic seekers who never rested in the estimate he got on with his purely surrealist paintings towards the end of the 30th century, where he, among other things, participated in the exhibition ”Exposition international du surréalisme”, as Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, arranged in Paris. But it also makes him uneven.

placed on the surrealists is busy to dig down into the psyche undergrowth to reveal the bizarre and unspoken content Magritte with vardagsvärlden. It is enough to pry in the language or shift a scale. Wittgenstein's philosophy of language interested him considerably more than its all ferocious manifesto.

René Magritte, ”La Mémoire”, 1948 Photo: Amos Rex

magritte's most interesting works is in my opinion the ordmålningar he makes early in his career. During the few productive years in Paris at the end of the twenties he painted a quarter of its entire production. It is also when he paints the famous barrel that is not a pipe.

the barrel is not represented at the exhibition more than a couple of drawings, but well a bunch of other works in which magritte's squiggly letters in the image content.

(the Passage of mirrors) from 1928, which shows a simple dial and the words ”ciel” (sky) and ”canon” (arms), is a fine example of how Magritte allows the viewer's thoughts an unexpected boost.

René Magritte, ”Les Reflets du Temps” in 1928. Photo: Amos Rex

like many other surrealists have magritte's works has been aged with the varied dignity. Violent popularity is not always a good thing. But where the majority of the for example, Salvador Dali's technically brilliant painting now appears to be caught in a cycle with not so much as to say, present, do much more of magritte's pictures. Maybe because he never dons the role of a pompous studies but is just looking to give it perfunctory vaneseendet a flick on the nose.

It is good that the contrasts are emphasized. Just the beta of the floating men in bowler hat, giant apples, plump floral cloud and parts of nude female bodies in the ancient ruins are not particularly meaningful when it comes about so frequently reproduced images, which, moreover, are often better in memory from some research where you saw them for the first time.

the second world war, abandoned the Magritte for the couple of years of their established style and devoted himself inspired by the Renoir to the vivid escapist dreams, full of fairies and sunshine. An odd but understandable way to escape from the darkness in occupied Belgium.

René Magritte, ”Le Retour de flamme” in 1943. Photo: Amos Rex

Vache-the period that followed is even a tvärnit where Magritte sought a deliberately antiestetiskt painting, which is delicious in its aware grumbling. And surprisingly timeless.

Amos Rex underground exhibition space consists of a large vaulted halls, where ceilings also appear as undulating domes with large round window up on the Glaspalatstorget outside.

no notice about the rooms. The mighty roof hovers almost as an appendix of a conventional – and effective – rumslösning with simple white walls. It works, but the special halls feels a tad wasted.

Then make the parallel exhibition with the Dutch artist collective, Studio Operation, the more of the rooms. Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, working across disciplines with art and technology, and strive as well as Magritte after to give birth to a poetry that exists in the ostensibly mundane.

”Drifter” of the Studio Operation. Photo: Stella Ojala

Skulpturserien ”Materialism” breaks such as down items like cars and phones to their basic elements and presents them in reduced-size groups of square blocks. Elegant still life on the theme of materiality and consumption.

however, the installation ”Drifter”, which consists of a gigantic monolith in the concrete, quietly floating in Amos Rex main hall.

The gray containerstora the object, which is actually flying on their own, communicate beautifully with the room's vaulted forms. And the round the skylight get a repeat in a myriad round the ceiling tiles, which suddenly becomes visible.

Brazenly show, sure. But also furious nicely.