This week I discovered that René Magritte was a funny guy. Here a few examples that of his wit in his Écrits Complets, his collected writings:
“Do you think much about death?” the interviewer asked René Magritte. “No,” the Belgian surrealists answered, “but then, I also don’t think much about life.”
Or: “When I go on holidays, the best moment is when I come back home.”
Obviously, Magritte's paintings are evidence of this humour but somehow, because they became so canonical, their importance took the upper hand.
What made me like Magritte even more, is that he met my favourite Satie - it was Satie who introduced Magritte and his friend E.L.T Mesens to Paris in 1921. There is this anecdote, recorded in the 1960s:
“In music I don’t go much further than Debussy and Ravel (but he asked Georgette a few times: ‘Play for me some Gymnopédie of Satie.'”
And this is my absolute favourite story that shows Magritte's love for language - in this case the Flemish word ‘kabberdoeskje”, which is a bar / bordelle. It was 1962 and the journalist Jan Walravens was driving Magritte around:
“I also didn't know that he loved words as much as painting and the outside world. Returning from Ghent, after the interview, accompanied by the lawyer Vanparys, Magritte would have liked to have the car stopped wherever a café remained open. ‘There is another ‘kabberdoeskje’ that we should know', he said. He used that word all the time. Eventually, Vanparys remarked to him: I think you especially like the word 'kabberdoeskje'…"