Painted in 1929 Le Sens propre, translated as "the literal meaning," belongs to a series of six word paintings all (with the exception of one) bearing the same title (see figs. 1-5). Having moved to Paris in 1927 Magritte was experiencing a period of immense creativity when he painted the present canvas. Under the influence of Paris Surrealists including André Breton and Paul Éluard, Magritte began to refine his style, producing some of his most famous work such as La Trahison des images in 1929. “During his t.mes
in the French capital… Magritte became one of the most creative artists of the era, systematically challenging representation in painting in ways that no other artist had done before” (J. Helfenstein in Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013-14, p. 72). An ambitious project, the word paintings exemplify the artist’s concern over linguistic and pictorial systems of representation and the arbitrary structure of language. Throughout the series Magritte replaces objects with indeterminate shapes containing words intended to signify their identity. The subjects themselves appear randomly chosen, and in isolating words from their expected context Magritte subverts the everyday meanings attached to them. The present work is particularly striking in evoking the limitations of language as the word is replaced by a calligraphic form.
René Magritte, Le Sens propre series, 1929
According to the artist’s numbering, Le Sens propre is the fifth work in the series. In these first five paintings, Magritte employs an unconventional composition. Taking as his subject matter the lower half of a wall, Magritte crops the picture so that the scene feels both intimate and claustrophobic. His color palette brightens, as evidenced by the present work, and the artist paints with a higher degree of polish. In the first painting in the series, and in earlier works such as Le Palais de rideaux, Magritte treats the wooden dado schematically (see fig. 6). In this fifth painting, however, we see a stylistic development as he takes care in rendering the grain of the panel. This attention to detail is heightened through the refined facture: “As Magritte sharpened and honed his technique the shadowy colors of his early surrealist paintings gradually gave way to a palette that is brighter and crisper, and which exploits new colors like… the sleek honey color of the slats of wood. In 1929 Magritte’s art becomes highly formalized, abstract and essentially minimalist. This tendency becomes increasingly evident from late 1928 as his technique steadily gains in precision and claritys and his images become simpler and more austere. One way of paring an image down to its most abstract form is to represent it by a word or a phrase, a variation on Magritte’s device of evoking objects through their absence” (S. Whitfield in Magritte (exhibition catalogue), The Hayward Gallery, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Menil collects ion, Houston & Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1992-93, n.p.).
The absence of an object is acutely felt in the fifth Le Sens propre. In preceding works Magritte placed the framed signifiers at the edge of a wooden floor, representative of the human domestic environment. Here, however, the calligraphic form slips into the top of the composition upon what looks like a scrap of paper. Magritte demonstrates his technical skill and further plays with the notion of reality through this use of trompe l’oeil, an artistic effect celebrated for centuries (see fig. 7). Lifting the gaze Magritte attempts to broaden the viewer’s vision. This effect is intensified through the upwards gradation of color and the light source emanating from above, casting a faint shadow. The scrolling curves of the symbol complement the grain lines in the wood and contrast the geometric vertical and horizontal lines of the paneling and floorboards. Enigmatic and compositionally complex Le Sens propre marks the culmination of Magritte’s achievements with the series, before he began to return to the loose brushstrokes of his 1928 works in the sixth and final work in the series. Magritte’s replacement of a word with an unidentifiable form alludes to the inherent abstraction found in language. A word, like an image, can only ever be a representation: “What appears inevitably true in one sense, because it has been endorsed by reason, is an oversimplified and limited notion of the possibilities of experience, since it does not take into account the ambivalent, paradoxical nature of reality. In Magritte paintings, everything is directed toward a specific crisis in consciousness, through which the limited evidence of the common-sense world can be transcended” (S. Gablik in Magritte, London 1985, p. 124). In its stylistic execution and ambiguous subject matter Le Sens propre in pure Magritte fashion defies concrete interpretation.
The present work was acquired by Edouard-Léon-Théodore Mesens, along with other paintings in the series, from Galerie Le Centaure where these works were first held. Magritte was introduced to Mesens in 1920 by their mutual acquaintance, the Belgian artist Karel Maes. An avid promoter of avant-garde art in Brussels Mesens became Magritte’s most vociferous supporter. In the mid-1920s Mesens and Magritte published the reviews Oesophage and Marie and contributed to the last edition of Francis Picabia’s Dadaist review 391. The second work in the series now belongs at the Menil collects ion in Texas, the third at the Scottish National Gallery of Art in Edinburgh and the fourth belonged to Robert Rauschenberg until his death.
