Personal Values

Although he is often grouped with Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí,Max Ernst,and Yves Tanguy,Magritte took a somewhat different approach to painting.Rather than creating fantasy imagery,he evoked the strangeness and ambiguity latent in reality.“I don’t paint visions,” he once said.“To the best of my capability,by painterly means,I describe objects—and the mutual relationship of objects—in such a way that none of our habitual concepts or feelings is necessarily linked with them.”

雖然人們常常把馬格利特看作是與薩爾瓦多·達利、馬克斯·恩斯特和伊夫·唐吉等一樣的超現實主義畫家，但馬格利特的畫法與他們有所不同。他沒有創造幻象，而是喚起了現實中潛在的陌生感和模糊性。“我畫的不是幻覺。”他曾表示，“我是以繪畫的方式盡全力描述現實事物——以及事物之間的相互關系——在我們慣常的觀念或感覺中，不一定會把它們這樣聯系在一起。”

2 Here,the artist presents a room filled with familiar things,but he gives human proportions to these formerly unassuming props of everyday life,creating a sense of disorientation and incongruity.Inside and out are inverted by his rendering of a skyscape on the interior walls of the room.The familiar becomes unfamiliar,the normal,strange; Magritte creates a paradoxical world that is,in his own words,“a defiance of common sense.”

2 馬格利特在畫中呈現了一個擺滿各種熟悉事物的房間，但他將這些原本不起眼的日常生活用品畫成了與人一般大小，讓觀者感覺困惑和不協調。他在房間內壁上繪制的天空景觀顛倒了房間內外。熟悉變成陌生，正常變成怪異——馬格利特創造了一個矛盾的世界，用他自己的話說，這是“對常識的無視”。

3 When he first saw this painting,Magritte’s dealer,Alexander Iolas,was violently upset by it.Tellingly,the artist replied,“In my picture,the comb (and the other objects as well)has specifically lost its ‘social character,’ it has become an object of useless luxury,which may,as you say,leave the spectator feeling helpless or even make him ill.Well,this is proof of the effectiveness of the picture.” ■

3 馬格利特的經紀人亞歷山大·伊歐拉斯初見此畫非常不安。馬格利特曾明確地對他解釋：“在我的畫中，梳子（其他物品也一樣）顯然已失去它的‘社會屬性’，而成為一種無用的奢侈品——正如你所說，這可能會讓觀者感到無助甚或不適。不過，這恰恰證明這幅畫發揮作用了。” □