Rene Magritte: The Pleasure Principle

Well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images, Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte (1898-1967) is one of the most important and revered artists of the 20th century. Opening on June 24th at Tate Liverpool, The Pleasure Principle will bring together over 100 paintings, some never before seen in the UK, as well as a rich selection of his little-known photographs, home movies and commercial art.

The Pleasure Principle examines the artist's oeuvre from a thematic perspective, displaying works in different media and from throughout his career. Magritte employed various techniques such as veiling and revelation through curtains and stage sets, the metamorphic transformation of objects through scale or petrification, to create an enigmatic and continually mesmerizing world.

The exhibition will feature Surrealist images painted in Magritte's characteristically graphic style, such as his anonymous men in bowler hats, and iconic paintings, including Golconda 1953, The Listening Room 1958, Time Transfixed 1938, which have become part of the popular imagination.

Rene Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees on of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, "What does that mean?" It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."
What emerges is a versatile artist and complex figure with an anarchic sense of humor whose art transcends the image of the unexciting bourgeois.

Rene Magritte

The Tomb of the Wrestlers, 1960

Private Collection @ Charly Herscovici / ADAGP, Paris 2011