Commissioned for the June 1965 cover of the prestigious modern art publication XX^e Siècle, Untitled (Woman’s Face Covered by a Rose) is exemplary of René Magritte’s iconic dreamlike lexicon which deconstructed and decontextualized the everyday objects of modern existence. This evocative gouache depicts the bust of a single female figure whose face is obfuscated by one of the artist’s favorite pictorial motifs, a rose. Reminiscent of the artist’s The Son of Man from 1964, it employs Magritte’s signature visual device of an object concealing what is immediately behind it, as in The Human Condition, 1933, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Reflective of the dislocated and distorted realities of Giorgio de Chirico—whose work had a profound effect on Magritte’s aesthetic language—Untitled and the Surrealist’s other images forever altered art history through its ruthless interrogation of the very act of representation.
 

"I have a very limited vocabulary: nothing but ordinary, familiar things. What is 'extraordinary' is the connection between them." 
— René Magritte

From Surrealism to Cinema

 

Magritte executed Untitled in 1965 for the cover of the groundbreaking French periodical XX^e Siècle upon the request of its founder, art historian Gualtieri di San Lazzaro. Published sporadically between 1938 and 1973, its roughly 60 issues included articles about, as well as original lithographs by, the most significant artists of the 20^th century, including Joan Miró, Max Ernst, and Marc Chagall. Magritte had produced a lithograph, Les bijoux indiscrets, 1963, two years earlier for XX^e Siècle and after seeing the artist’s Paris exhibition in December 1964, San Lazzaro offered him a second commission for the periodical.

 

We can assume San Lazzaro at first had asked for a work related to the “imaginary,” as Magritte initially rejected the offer, responding to his letter that “I attach no real value to the imaginary.”ⁱ  After San Lazzaro sent the artist a second letter, Magritte agreed to make the gouache—so long as it could follow the theme of the “imagination” as opposed to the “imaginary.”

   

 “Everything would be right in your project if instead of the word Imaginary, the word Poetry were being used. According to my conviction, poetry certainly depends upon the real—it is not ‘imaginary.’ Only so-called poetry is of indifferent value like ‘the imaginary.” Magritte continued, “It is the imagination which—together with the wit—is the source of things of beauty, as they are called, which delight us. True imagination is not responsible for whatever idiocies may be included in art. There should, then, be no confusion between Imagination and the Imaginary.”ⁱⁱ

 

By January 14, Magritte had told to his friend André Bosmans that he was unsure which image to use for the commission, but on January 19 he had elected to use the one that his friend expressed preference for, writing that “this image will go ‘well’ with an apologia for the imaginary. (It is no more imaginary than a ‘realistic’ scene, but I believe it to be very poetic.)”ⁱⁱⁱ He send the work to San Lazzaro a day later and it appeared on the cover of the June issue. 

 

San Lazzaro sold Untitled to renowned director Vittorio de Sica, one of the most prominent figures in Italy’s neorealist movement and whose films Sciuscià and Bicycle Thieves are today regarded as some of the most important contributions to 20^th century European cinema. Interestingly, during the time around the creation of Untitled, Surrealism was very much in vogue in the cinematic world; in fact, de Sica was directing films with absurdist and Surrealist plot lines well in the 1960s—notably Il Boom, 1964—which are considered to have presaged the work of David Lynch. Untitled thus embodies two histories tracing both the importance of XX^e Siècle and Surrealism as an art historical movement as well as the resurgence of international interest in Surrealist film in the 1960s.

 

A Rose by Any Other Name

 

The rose was one of Magritte’s most iconic pictorial tropes, reappearing throughout his oeuvre and especially during his mature period, such as in Pandora’s Box, 1951, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; The Blow to the Heart, 1952; and The Tomb of the Wrestlers, 1960. In 1951, Magritte wrote to dealer Alexander Iolas: “My present research, at the beginning of the winter, is concerned with the rose. I must find something precious and worthy to say about it.”^iv

 

A month later, he wrote to his friend, Surrealist poet Paul Éluard, elucidating that “for about two months I have been looking for a solution to what I call ‘the problem of the rose.’ My research now having been completed, I realize that I had probably known the answer to my question for a long time, but in an obscure fashion, and not only I myself but any other man likewise. This kind of knowledge, which seems to be organic and doesn't rise to the level of consciousness, was always present, at the beginning of every effort of research I made.”

"My present research, at the beginning of the winter, is concerned with the rose. I must find something precious and worthy to say about it." 
— René Magritte

Magritte continued, “After completion of the research, it can be ‘easily’ explained that the rose is scented air, but it is also cruel, and reminds me of your ‘parricidal rose,’” in reference to Éluard’s poem Blason des fleurs et des fruits. “I also recall a passage from Nougé's forbidden images: ‘It is because of searing memory that we become aware of this faint scent of roses...’”^v Magritte’s myriad associations with the rose only lend Untitled even more ambiguity; its indecipherable message continues to mysteify viewers today just as it did the readers of XX^e Siècle in the 1960s.

 

^{i, ii, iii} René Magritte, quoted in David Sylvester and Sarah Whitfield, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, IV: Gouaches, Temperas, Watercolours and Papiers Collés 1918-1967, London, 1994, p. 279-280.

^{iv, v} René Magritte, quoted in David Sylvester and Sarah Whitfield, René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné, III: Oil Paintings, Objects and Bronzes, 1949-1967, London, 1993, p. 196-197.