(AGENPARL) – mer 09 ottobre 2024 (https://kmskbe.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/Down/ErOVnE6Bp2JFkXzNPS60AjIBZf_qjORNtjaxEuj7sglW_A?e=niac3p) Press release
Emily Mae Smith’s work will now be on display at the Magritte Museum. The American painter, who lives and works in New York (USA), will create a unique personal dialogue with Magritte’s fascinating universe. New works, made exclusively for the exhibition, will be on view alongside loans from private and public collections.
To mark the centenary of André Breton's Surrealist Manifesto (1924), several notable works by René Magritte from the museum will travel to the Centre Pompidou in Paris for an important exhibition celebrating 100 years of Surrealism. Simultaneously, a prestigious Magritte exhibition will debut at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. Capitalizing on these exceptional events, the Magritte Museum will host Emily Mae Smith for an exhibition of her work within the framework of its permanent collection.
A recurring character in Emily Mae Smith’s oeuvre is an anthropomorphic broomstick figure, inspired by the segment The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which was based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 poem.
This figure becomes the artist's avatar, simultaneously referring to the painter's brush, the working tool of housemaids, the mythologized instrument of the witch, and the phallus, giving her paintings a sexual dimension. The broom, normally considered a tool and helpmate, becomes the she-broom in Smith’s works, an instrument of artistic anxiety and self-empowerment. Rather than being pushed around, the broom who is often depicted as female, comes to experience a rich fantasy life.
Emily Mae Smith stages this broomstick figure in various spaces: a 17th-century interior, a rocky exterior, a cave, etc. accompanying it with props and objects borrowed from Symbolism (skull, flowers, still life…) and Surrealism. In her works, she readily places direct references to art history and Magritte's work, like an apple, a burnt-out candle, rocks… Sometimes, even a Magritte painting appears in her works, creating a poetic mise en abyme.
Beyond reference or allusion, the connection of Emily Mae Smith's paintings and those of René Magritte shows a keen sense of image construction and a taste for visual trickery. Both artists have also chosen to work with the figure of the “double-self,” the former with the man in a hat and the latter with the broomstick, making each their self-portrait. Finally, their painting technique with well-defined contours, the presence of text in the image, and the “shown-hidden” aspect give a strange dimension to their paintings, placing the viewer in a state of questioning, perplexity, but also contemplation.
Smith also shares with Magritte a certain dark humor, as she enjoys playing with her “double-self.” By giving her character multiple forms, sometimes classic: posing as a creative genius, sometimes submissive: relegated to its condition as a household object, dreaming of faraway places… She then uses it to question the place of women in painting and in our society.
One trick hides another.
This exhibition is supported by Magritte Foundation, Petzel, rodolphe janssen, Perrotin and the generous donors, Benjamin Khakshour, Justine Freeman and Robert Lowinger.
Press files & HD pictures (https://kmskbe.sharepoint.com/:f:/s/Down/ErOVnE6Bp2JFkXzNPS60AjIBZf_qjORNtjaxEuj7sglW_A?e=niac3p)
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
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