Panoramic Surrealism: The Enchanted Domain

Rene' Magritte 
the public artist, who played with the perception
of space and framing...
and who always sought to create paintings that
explored and expanded reality.

"The Knokke Casino, a seafront casino in West Flanders, Belgium is the unlikely home to some of the most expansive artwork in Europe; displaying works by Keith Haring, Paul Delvaux, and René Magritte. The largest casino in Belgium, the Knokke casino was the first of four designed by architect Léon Stynen. Though severely damaged during World War II, the renovation allowed Belgian surrealist master René Magritte the opportunity to create a massive mural, spanning 360 degrees of event space. The mural, "The Enchanted Domain", was finished in 1953 and comprises eight panels that plunge their viewers into a fever-dream of surrealist joy."
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"From Picasso to Haring:
Striking Artist Murals Around the World"  
​By: Tori Campbell

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​Panoramic Surrealism: 
The Enchanted Domain at SFMOMA
by Alex Zivkovic, June 2018
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     In 1953, in a Belgian seaside resort, a team of five artists painted a 233-foot-long 360 degree mural full of leaves shaped like birds, inverted mermaids, and women who merge with the sky behind them. Referencing eight oil paintings painted by René Magritte, the artists worked diligently with projectors and paint to complete the artist’s vision.

​     But the artist himself was not among the painters. Magritte, the Surrealist from whom these wild, imaginative creations sprang, never touched the work during the five or six weeks it took to complete. He simply visited the casino, with his wife and dog every few days to check in. Yet it is his vision on the wall, in a mural that is, to this day, a prominent Surrealist attraction in Knokke.

​     Over the course of his career, Magritte aspired to create work for the public. Through his work as a painter, illustrator, and commercial artist, his art had a “public” presence in the poetry publications he illustrated or perfume advertisements he designed. It was not until the 1950s, when Magritte began receiving commissions for theaters, museums, casinos, and other buildings, that he was able to produce art at a grand, immersive scale.

​     Mural commissions allowed him to envision the ideas from his canvases at larger-than-life scale, imprinting them on the walls and ceilings of buildings around Belgium, his home country. In this, the largest such commission,
     Magritte imagined a panorama showing one continuous environment: a magical place called The Enchanted Domain.

from: Panoramic Surrealism: 
         The Enchanted Domain at SFMOMA
         by Alex Zivkovic, June 2018
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​Mural-Panel Images
​from Matteson Art

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​       Five of the eight oil paintings that served as the models for this series will be (were) on display at SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) as part of a re-examination of how this immersive space resonates with other images developed throughout his career.
​     By focusing on his works of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, René Magritte: The Fifth Season draws attention to the set of Surrealist symbols Magritte perfected and used again and again. Nowhere is this focus more apparent than in the landscape of Surreal creations in The Enchanted Domain which includes all of the artist’s most popular motifs in one newly-imagined universe.
     Magritte believed that the canvas models he provided were sufficient to realize his vision and as such they merit their own consideration. These small oil canvases, painted at 1:6 ⅓ scale reveal the precise texture of the painter’s hand, manifest his imagination, and allow us to examine the attention he gives to each figure up close.
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 “That the paintings are not being kept together has caused a good deal of debate among art experts here and abroad. Many believe that the paintings should not be separated.
​The seller, an unidentified American businessman, bought the suite purely as an investment.”
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​       While researching this exhibition, Associate Curator Caitlin Haskell had the pleasure of seeing the mural in situ. But no one has seen the original oil paintings together in over 20 years; they were always owned as a group, first by Nellens and his family, and then by a series of private collectors. In 1998, the set was broken up and sold as individual works. Ever since they have resided separately.
     SFMOMA is (was) fortunate to be presenting several panels together, allowing us to approximate the feeling of a continuous mural. As a 360-degree artwork, the mural itself of course, can never be seen all at once. But these models, which are hung on a curved surface, give us at least a glimpse, as if looking directly into the world that would wrap around our field of vision.
     This gallery presentation will be (was) one of several immersive exhibition rooms in René Magritte: The Fifth Season which will showcase other series of works and an interactive, interpretive space as well. This mode of presentation is true to Magritte the public artist, who played with the perception of space and framing in his canvases, and who always sought to create paintings that explored and expanded reality.
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"The Treachery of Images "1928-29 By Rene Magritte,

​"This all reminds me of my "Pipe" Series!
Check it out!" -RQ
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Related:

Magritte at the SFMOMA:
Enigma, Conundrum, Paradox
A review by Bill Carmel, MFA


"The Ignorant Fairy”, 16 m wide
1957 Palais de Beaux Arts, Charleroi, Belgium



IN THE ART ROOM:
​THE MAGRITTE PROJECT, ONE
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2013