Advertisment for "Norine" 1925

Here's a 1926 gouache on paper ad for "Norine" by René Magritte. This is what I call a funny painting! The palette here is subdued, as though Magritte had to downplay his natural instincts. But he can't help himself. I can imagine him thinking, "How can I make fashion magazine illustration... strange?" The shapes of the figures are blocky and geometric, like cut-out paper dolls assembled on a stage. The figure on the right makes me laugh – her face a red and green mask! But also, I’m imagining what it might have been like for Magritte. He wanted to be avant-garde! What would it feel like to have to make images of something so banal? It’s like the painting is trying to make a kind of commentary by defamiliarizing something so commercial. Artists are always riffing off one another, even if they hate what they are looking at. In a way, this piece is like an inside joke, a conversation with a commercial, with a fashion plate. It's so Magritte to create something that is both incredibly mundane and totally bizarre.