Largehearted Boy: Rene Magritte playlist

Magritte_René coverIn his essay "About 'the Universe of Sound'" the Belgian Surrealist painter Réne Magritte writes:

I am not in the least curious about the enigmas of acoustics: my "Universe of Sound" scarcely exists, it could hardly entertain or disturb anyone. I listen and I hear indeed, without the intervention of any other universe. I listen preferably to delightful and benign things, and I wish to listen to and to see what can evoke their mystery.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there are not a lot of images of sound, per se, in his paintings, but in his 1927 The Menaced Assassin, the assassin of the title is depicted as pausing at the crime scene—freshly murdered corpse behind him, detectives outside the door waiting to catch him—to listen transfixed to a phonograph on the table. What's this killer listening to?

 

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Published in: Largehearted Boy