Fifty-eight million euros. This is the high estimate of this painting by René Magritte (1898-1967), The Close Friendcondensing some of the Belgian painter’s best-known pictograms – the bowler hat and the cottony sky – that Christie’s will be offered for auction in London on March 7, as part of the annual sale of surrealist works. “The most handsome of the fifteen men in bowler hats listed”according to the sales specialist, Olivier Camu, who does not despair of reaching the previous record 71.5 million euroswon, in 2022, by “The Empire of Lights”, a famous series of disturbing nocturnal landscapes.
One hundred years after its advent, in 1924, more than twenty years after the resounding auction, in 2003, of the collection of the founder of the artistic movement, the poet André Breton (1896-1966), surrealism is still popular. It is also a surrealist composition, THE Ingres violin, by Man Ray (1890-1976), which since 2022 has held the record ($12.4 million, approximately 11.9 million euros) for the most expensive photograph in the world.
In the eyes of Parisian dealer Marcel Fleiss, who has long defended his large and small figures, “surrealism is doing well compared to other movements”despite the general market slowdown. “It’s a security investment with added poetry”, summarizes Olivier Camu. A paradox that this fascination of the market for creators in love with poetry, freedom and love, in short, of what is priceless…
For ten years already, exhibitions have multiplied around a movement so popular that the word has entered everyday language to define everything that is considered absurd. The price of success, surrealism was absorbed by popular culture, fashion, cinema and advertising. It is to Magritte that the leather goods manufacturer Delvaux refers for a line of accessories featuring his famous bowler hat. Magritte again, who inspired Dior’s haute couture show in 2018.
Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Dorothea Tanning
At auction too, the Belgian painter, who annoyed André Breton with his fierce independence, holds the upper hand. “Since 2020, no fewer than fifteen paintings have sold for more than $10 million [environ 9,2 millions d’euros]a hell of a performance in four short years, which only Picasso and Monet have surpassed”, notes modern art broker Thomas Seydoux. Fans looking for polished images, however, are less interested in his more enigmatic paintings from the 1920s, full of dark enigmas, or in his so-called “Renoir” period, when Magritte was inspired by the touch of the Impressionists.
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