This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte at Gagosian

Apples, pipes, bowler hats, and cotton-candy skies: René Magritte's most recognizable motifs reappear in this Gagosian group exhibition, which examines the Belgian artist's legacy through paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photographs from all periods of his career, loaned by museums and private collections, alongside works by contemporary artists of different generations — many of them created especially for the occasion. The exhibition marks two symbolic dates: twenty years since "Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images", at LACMA, the first major investigation into the Belgian surrealist's influence on post-war artists, with dramaturgical installations conceived by John Baldessari; and ninety years since the historic "International Surrealist Exhibition", held at the New Burlington Galleries, a short walk from Gagosian itself in London, and decisive in consolidating Magritte's international reputation. Among the highlights is "La Lampe philosophique" (1936), a conceptual portrait of the artist himself that was also at the LACMA exhibition and which Magritte described as the image of a mental world closed in on itself — the smoker as a prisoner of his own pipe.