René Magritte x Emily Mae Smith

Published on 05.08.2024

After Jean-Michel Folon’s six-month exhibition, it is now Emily Mae Smith’s turn, a painter born in 1979 in the United States (Austin, Texas), to settle at the Magritte Museum and establish a personal dialogue with the universe of the Belgian icon. The artistwho lives and works in New York (USA), will present around thirty works. 

A recurring character in Emily Mae Smith’s oeuvre is an anthropomorphic broomstick figure, inspired by the segment The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which was based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1797 poem. This figure becomes her avatar, simultaneously referring to the painter’s brush, the working tool of housemaids, the mythologized instrument of the witch but also the phallus, giving a sexual dimension to her paintings.  

Emily Mae Smith stages this brush-broom figure in various spacesa 17th-century interior, a rocky exterior, a cave, etc. She accompanies it with props and objects borrowed from Symbolism (skullflowersstill life...) and Surrealism. In her worksshe readily places direct references to art history and Magritte’swork: like an apple, a burnt-outcandle, rocks... Sometimeseven a Magritte painting appears within her workscreating a poetic mise en abyme. 

Beyond reference or allusion, the connection between Emily Mae Smith’s paintings and those of René Magritte also shows a keen sense of image construction and a taste for visual trickery. Both artists have chosen to work with the figure of the “double-self,” the former with the man in a hat and the latter with broomstickmaking eachtheir self-portrait. Finally, their painting technique with well-defined contours, as well as the presence of text within the image or the “shown-hidden” aspect, give a strange dimension to their paintings, placing the viewer in a state of questioning, perplexity, but also contemplation. 

Smith also shares with Magritte a certain darkhumor, as she enjoys playing with her « double-self ». By giving her character multiple formssometimes classic : posing as a creative geniussometimes submissiverelegated to its condition as a household objectdreaming of faraway places... She then uses it to question the place of women in painting and in our society. One trick hides another. 

This exhibition is supported by Petzelrodolphe janssen, Perrotin and the generous donors, Benjamin Khakshour, Justine Freeman and Robert Lowinger. 

 

Crédits : Emily Mae Smith The Cave (The Studio), 2023 oil on linen 84 x 67 inches 213.36 x 170.18 cm Courtesy of the artist and private collection, Toronto, Canada Image courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York. Photo © Charles Benton