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René Magritte, "Le perspective amoureuse" (1935)

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Rene Magritte Andre Breton Marcel Marien In Brief: Sotheby's The Persistence of Time Fall Museum Shows in Paris Magritte Stolen in Armed Robbery James Ensor

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This is an important work by Magritte, in which he begins to develop his repertoire of “problems.” The problem in this case is a door with a mysterious opening—a juxtaposition that, as the French theorist of Surrealism André Breton wrote at the time, compares “two objects as remote as possible from one another.” The door is both open and closed, revealing and concealing. In a letter to his friend and fellow Surrealist Marcel Mariën, Magritte explained the title: “It is love that opens the greatest vistas. Here, the greatest feeling of depth has been suggested by removing parts of the paneling of a door that concealed a landscape of known objects (trees, sky) and of a mysterious object (the large metal bell lying on the terrace).” In a typically confusing gesture, Magritte left a different title, Le démon de la perversité, inscribed on the stretcher, which had been intended for another painting.

Among the many exhibitions that have included this painting are the Venice Biennales of 1948 and 1954; a Magritte survey at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1965; and another, at the Beyeler Foundation, in Basel, in 2005, which triggered a renewed interest in his work among contemporary-art dealers and collectors. The picture also has a salesroom history: Sold at Christie’s London in 1981 for £100,000 ($214,000), it appeared in 1997 at the auction house’s New York branch, where it failed to find a buyer (est. $1.5–2 million), only to turn up in November 2006 at Sotheby’s New York, where it realized $3.3 million. That price has since been exceeded by five Magritte paintings in a thriving market for Surrealism. However, it was not profit potential that prompted the owner to sell this work but unspecified “personal circumstances,” according to Helena Newman, the Sotheby’s London–based vice chairman of Impressionist and modern art.

"London Sales Preview" originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's June 2008 Table of Contents.