Two bumper exhibitions open today, 11 October, at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium – and The Brussels Times has had a sneak preview of both.
René Magritte x Emily Mae Smith features around 40 works by the American artist inspired by the Belgian surrealist best known for his striking images of bowler hats, apples, female nudes and a pipe which isn’t a pipe (‘Ceci n'est pas une pipe’), even if it looks rather like one.
"It’s a dream come true to see my paintings hanging next to Magritte’s," Smith told The Brussels Times during a private guided tour.
Part of the Musée Magritte collection is currently on loan to the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, which created space for the 45-year-old New York-based painter’s highly idiosyncratic works.
Magritte’s influence is certainly evident, although she very much has her own style. A central feature is a broomstick figure which takes on human characteristics.
"I’ve tried to integrate my work into the spaces between Magritte’s [paintings] in a kind of timeline to create a story," she says.
"I landed on the image of the broom when I was watching the Disney film Fantasia. There’s a scene where the sorcerer’s apprentice thinks he’s going to get the broom to do all the work for him. And that was a bit of a light-bulb moment for me. I took on the broom as an avatar, not only as a painter but as a woman," the artist said.
Credit: The Brussels Times / Dennis Abbott
"In the art world we don’t see a lot of women as creators, but as objects. The broom in my paintings refuses to let herself become someone else’s tool."
Smith also makes it very clear that she’s a feminist painter, but has no issue with Magritte's famous female nudes.
"There’s nothing wrong with painting a naked woman and nothing wrong with evoking feelings of lust. Women have feelings of lust too, you know," she smiles. René Magritte x Emily Mae Smith runs until 2 March 2025.
Masterful sketches
The other major exhibition, entitled Drafts, From Rubens to Khnopff, is devoted to sketches and their place in the creative process.
It features more than a hundred sketches by painters including Rembrandt, Constable, Ensor, Magritte, Jordaens and Stevens, to name but a few.
Véronique Bücken, curator of 15th and 16th century paintings, explains: "Many of the sketches have been stored in the museum vaults for years and never previously exhibited." Around 30 have been restored to mitigate damage and discolouration caused by time and even previous cleaning work.
Among the highlights are a section devoted to 12 oil-on-wood sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, including The Birth of Venus and The Fall of Icarus, and The Ignorant Fairy by Magritte, with preparatory paintings alongside it of his muse, the 1950s Belgian tennis star Anne-Marie Crowet.
Peter Paul Rubens, The Triumph of the Church
The visitor is taken on a journey through 12 thematic rooms, each designed to unlock the stories behind the sketches. In many cases, the finished work is shown with the initial drawings, which are often surprisingly detailed.
The exhibition highlights different types of sketches from an underdrawing, only visible under layers of paint thanks to infrared technology, to painted studies, outdoor sketches and even abstract works free of convention, where the preparatory and finished work are merged in one.
Drafts, From Rubens to Khnopff runs until 16 February 2025.
