Magritte

Magritte: Copy/Paste offers a new way of looking at René Magritte’s work: through the lens of collage. Moving beyond collage as a technique of scissors and paper, the book reveals how Magritte transformed its principles into a powerful pictorial language: cutting, combining, displacing and reconnecting images, words and ideas.

From his adoption of collage in the mid-1920s, as a declaration of his allegiance to Surrealism, to his encounters with Old Master painting, Magritte repeatedly explored the unsettling potential of unexpected juxtapositions. In this sense, his paintings come close to Max Ernst’s description of them as “hand-painted collages.” Published alongside the major exhibition at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, the volume places Magritte’s multifaceted use of collage within a much broader history of the medium, from its Cubist origins and Surrealist reinvention to cinematic montage and contemporary art. With contributions by leading specialists, the book offers both a fresh interpretation of Magritte’s work and a broader history of collage, tracing its central role in the development of modern art.