René Magritte

About

From Wikipedia:

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and boundaries of reality and representation. His imagery has influenced pop art, minimalist art, and conceptual art.

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We were amongst the many people who have been hugely influenced by this great artist’s work.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney | News | New Feature: Paintings On The Wall – René Magritte (1898 – 1967), March 2015

I got interested in early on. All the great images. What I loved about him was, he was apparently a very normal guy. It all went on up here, no outward semblance of this surrealism. And he used to paint from 9.00 til 1.00 o’clock – very civilised Belgian gentleman. Two o’clock til 5.00. He painted in a very ordered, very normal house. So I always loved this idea of this guy coming out with these far-out images. I can’t think of a better surrealist in the 20th century. I think he’s better than Dali. So it was great. It was as if we discovered him. They used a lot of his images in advertising. And of course he hadn’t died, so his work was still quite available.

Paul McCartney – From “The Paul McCartney World Tour” book – 1989

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Early in 1966, Paul McCartney visited Paris with art dealer Robert Fraser and purchased two or three paintings by René Matisse, depending on the source.

I’ve always loved Mr Magritte’s work and have admired him since the 1960s when I first became aware of his work. I love his paintings so much that I once took a trip to Paris to visit Magritte’s art dealer Alexander Iolas and had a very pleasant meal in his apartment above the gallery. We then went downstairs to see the paintings and I was able to select three pictures.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney | News | New Feature: Paintings On The Wall – René Magritte (1898 – 1967), March 2015

I was very interested in Magritte and Robert was interested in my interest in Magritte and he said, “Well, I know this gallery owner Iolas who’s his dealer in Paris.”

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

Robert and I went over and had a very pleasant time. Iolas was a very urbane Parisian, a very nice man. There were a couple of other people there, including an older woman, it was very social. Just French friends of Iolas.

He had a couple of Nicholas Monro’s free-standing sheep which you used to see in houses in the sixties; people used to have them as sculptures. He had a couple of those and, also by Monro, he had a whacking great rhino, a full-sized rhinocerous, it was a cocktail cabinet. He would open the rhinocerous’s side and serve drinks, and we would all go, ‘Hah, hah, very funny!’ It was like a talking point. And after dinner and a couple of drinks, we wandered downstairs, where the whole place was just full of Magrittes. I was in seventh heaven. He was Magritte’s agent and I had my pick of Aladdin’s cave. Now being a sensible lad, I only chose two oils. They were about 30*40, decent-size pictures, the most expensive of which was £3,000.

I bought a big oil called “Gloria”, which was an upturned carp. When you look sideways at it it looks like a big hooded figure with one eye but when you look the other way at it it’s a carp, it’s a fish, in the shadows inside a castle keep and outside is the sky and clouds where we all want to be. I bought another, called “The Countess of Monte Cristo”, which is a painting showing a painted bottle alongside two ordinary wine bottles, very Magritte, very Surrealist. I didn’t know he painted actual bottles themselves till much later so I thought this was just a joke, the girl is on the bottle. A bottle came up at a studio sale. Paul Simon bought one, I know because I’ve visited him and seen it.

I wish I’d bought more now but the ones I got were very good. And then over the years, I’ve started to get this and that. It was lovely, lovely to be able to look through them all and looking back I remember I saw “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This Is Not a Pipe), one of the new series, which I nearly bought. I liked that a lot. It was the first time I’d heard of it. I liked the whole idea, ‘This is not a pipe.’ ‘Why?’ ‘It’s a painting of a pipe.’ ‘Oh yes, of course!’ That’s one of the big things I got from him.

My view now is that he was probably the greatest of the Surrealists. At the time I thought he was damn good but that there were more important Surrealists, but now I don’t think there are. Who is there? De Chirico? Dali? I personally don’t like their stuff quite as much. Of course, we were very into all the legends: how Magritte painted from nine until one and then had his lunch. Robert went to see him with Michael Cooper, and the greatest photograph of Michael Cooper’s is of the bell push. It just says ‘R. Magritte’.

Paul McCartney – From “Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now” by Barry Miles, 1997

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Circa June 1968, McCartney acquired another painting by Magritte through Robert Fraser: a green apple overlaid with the text “Au Revoir,” titled “Le Jeu De Mourre.” This painting inspired the logo of Apple, the company recently launched by The Beatles.

In my garden at Cavendish Avenue, which was a 100-year-old house I’d bought, Robert was a frequent visitor. One day he got hold of a Magritte he thought I’d love. Being Robert, he would just get it and bring it. I was out in the garden with some friends. I think I was filming Mary Hopkin with a film crew, just getting her to sing live in the garden, with bees and flies buzzing around, high summer. We were in the long grass, very beautiful, very country-like. We were out in the garden and Robert didn’t want to interrupt, so when we went back in the big door from the garden to the living room, there on the table he’d just propped up this little Magritte. It was of a green apple. That became the basis of the Apple logo. Across the painting Magritte had written in that beautiful handwriting of his ‘Au Revoir’. And Robert had split. I thought that was the coolest thing anyone’s ever done with me. When I saw it, I just thought: ‘Robert’. Nobody else could have done that. Of course we’d settle the bill later. He wouldn’t hit me with a bill.

Paul McCartney – From “Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser” by Harriet Vyner, 1999

There’s a great story about that. I had this friend called Robert Fraser, who was a gallery owner in London. We used to hang out a lot. And I told him I really loved Magritte. We were discovering Magritte in the sixties, just through magazines and things. And we just loved his sense of humour. And when we heard that he was a very ordinary bloke who used to paint from nine to one o’clock, and with his bowler hat, it became even more intriguing. Robert used to look around for pictures for me, because he knew I liked him. It was so cheap then, it’s terrible to think how cheap they were. But anyway, we just loved him … One day he brought this painting to my house. We were out in the garden, it was a summer’s day. And he didn’t want to disturb us, I think we were filming or something. So he left this picture of Magritte. It was an apple – and he just left it on the dining room table and he went. It just had written across it “Au revoir”, on this beautiful green apple. And I tought that was like a great thing to do. He knew I’d love it and he knew I’d want it and I’d pay him later. […] So it was like wow! What a great conceptual thing to do, you know. And this big green apple, which I still have now, became the inspiration for the logo. And then we decided to cut it in half for the B-side!

Paul McCartney – Interview with Flemish Public Radio, 1993

Robert [Fraser – art dealer and friend] also brought me other interesting Magritte’s pictures over the years and one of them became the inspiration for the original Beatles Apple Records label: the big green apple was inspired by Magritte.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney | News | New Feature: Paintings On The Wall – René Magritte (1898 – 1967), March 2015

Paul came up with the idea of calling it Apple, which he got from René Magritte. I don’t know if he was a Belgian or Dutch artist… he drew a lot of green apples or painted a lot of green apples. I know Paul bought some of his paintings in 1966 or early 1967. I think that’s where Paul got the idea for the name from.

Neil Aspinall – From “Those Were The Days 2.0” by Stefan Granados

From andrewgrahamdixon.com:

Magritte’s picture, which dates from 1966, late in the artist’s life, appears as number 1051 in Volume 3 of the catalogue raisonne of the artist’s work. The authors of that weighty and learned tome, assembled under the editorial supervision of David Sylvester, quote the somewhat unilluminating Larousse dictionary definition of Mora, or Mourre, as “a game in which one of the players rapidly displays a hand with some fingers raised, the others folded inwards, while his opponent calls out a number which, for him to win, has to correspond to that of the total of raised fingers”; and they go on to speculate that Magritte’s curious choice of title is probably a play on words, a pun on the phrase “Les jeunes amours” (“young love”), which the artist had already used for the title of an earlier picture showing three apples rather than one. They add that they “have not been able to examine the picture” and record its whereabouts simply as “Private Collection”.

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In later years, Paul McCartney’s wife Linda acquired another painting by Magritte through Robert Fraser, and also the spectacles of the artist.

Linda bought me a Magritte for my birthday and it would be Robert she’d go to. She liked Robert a lot. He was one of our friends. Funnily enough, our kids didn’t, because he was too arrogant. And he was often drunk, and they were little and they couldn’t understand it. And he would say to them, ‘Make the fire, will you?’ And they would go behind his back and make little fuck-off signs. They weren’t intimidated by this slightly overbearing bloke. They liked him when he got on the wagon. He’d come down to our house in Sussex and then he was a changed person and they could handle him very easily then. But it was when he was being himself and a little indulgent — my kids didn’t enjoy that. They didn’t like Ringo either. Although he’s a bit of a darling. But he had the same problem – he had a major alcoholic problem.

Paul McCartney – From “Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser” by Harriet Vyner, 1999

Linda bought me these for my birthday once [he produces the paint-spattered spectacles of surrealist painter René Magritte which he keeps in a Perspex box on his desk]. Georgette, his wife, was selling the contents of his studio and Linda bought me the easel and his spectacles and some small linen canvases which I didn’t dare paint on. I’m such a huge fan that was just mega. I was intimidated for weeks about painting on the canvases but in the end I just went, “Agghhhh!” and I did. Then I tried on the glasses which are a very powerful prescription; they’ll give you a headache! What I love about Magritte is he turned the world upside down and inside out in terms of meaning and significance. Science and philosophy and religion are starting to converge on this idea that, whatever hat you put on, you are still you. Dickens writes Little Dorrit but he still comes through in her character. Burroughs and Ginsberg show through in their writing. Magritte’s specs are a reminder: the world is a jungle of crazy interpretations.

Paul McCartney – Interview with The Guardian, November 29, 2008

Last updated on October 16, 2023