Unthink: Breasts and Magritte

Have you seen the Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute yet? It’s in Chicago until Oct. 13 and you should go. The paintings are gorgeous. The exhibit rooms are dark and cool (in both senses of the word), and the art is both dreamy and disturbing. And when you come back, would you let me know what you thought? Specifically, how did it make you feel about women’s bodies?

This is the time of the year when everyone feels free to talk about breasts. I had nearly forgotten about the pink washing until my coffee cup today had a rosy lid. I thought first, “This looks like a nipple” then “Oh yes, it’s supposed to.”

René Magritte thought a lot about breasts. Or, at least, he was very interested in painting them. The first time I cruised through the exhibit I thought, “Wow, those are a lot of floating lady parts.” The second time through, I counted to be sure that I wasn’t exaggerating. There are 28 women’s breasts in total, most of them on headless torsos. There are no nudes of men (though there is one very odd nose that could count as a phallus, I suppose).

Now, there are naked ladies and dudes painted and sculpted and photographed throughout the Art Institute and, indeed, throughout the history of art. The human form is beautiful and artists celebrate it. Well, that’s what my 5th grade teacher told us, anyway, on a field trip to the Art Institute.

I have also thought a lot about breasts.

It has been nearly 20 years since my grandmother died of breast cancer. She lived with us after she was diagnosed, and my mother cared for her throughout her treatments. Mema’s breast and uterus were both cancerous and had to be removed. Mema did not want me to see her body after those surgeries, but I did anyway. Nudity had never been a big deal among women in my family, and I saw her because we were caring for her. I was 13, and I was helping in the ways I knew how, mostly just by being there. It was hard to see her like that, as my mother helped her out of the shower. But it has been important, too.

We can’t choose which images that will stay with us forever. We can only choose how we interpret them.

Certain paintings will make me think of her. Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits of pain and surgery or the sharp, turned edges of a breast in a Picasso. How bodies can be elegant even after they have been injured or taken apart.

The Art Institute has been teasing the Magritte exhibit with an ad campaign challenging viewers to “Unthink” things. The ads are compelling, and it is true that Magritte is all about the unexpected. A bag over the heads of kissing lovers. Floating sea turtle monsters at a weird polo match. A blue sky where his skin should be.

But what do we expect of women’s bodies in the first place in art? Are we simply objects of beauty, or are we still people? Sometimes, with Magritte, it seems we are something else entirely.

When you enter the exhibit, you will see a naked dead woman spread out on a table, her face bloodied, with men encircling her wearing suits. The explainer on audio is that the painting depicts a scene from a popular crime fiction series. It’s a mystery that will never be solved, you’re told.

The Menaced Assassin via MOMA

Farther in you’ll find “The Titanic Days,” which shows a naked woman being attacked by a man in a suit. The curators on audio discuss how it is flat, dueling, certainly violent. According to Christie’s, it’s from a “period when his art was exploring dark and sinister themes connecting eroticism and violence.” This conflation of sexual violence and eroticism is upsetting. This painting is clearly an attack, a clash.

Interestingly, next, you will encounter the piece entitled “The Rape,” which you might at first find comical, since Magritte sets a woman’s torso in place of a face. I’ll let Susan Gubar walk you through that one:

“Endowed with blind nipples replacing eyes, a belly button where her nose should be, and a vulva for a mouth, the female face is erased by the female torso imposed upon it, as if Magritte were suggesting that anatomy is bound to be her destiny.”

It’s not the Art Institute’s job to tell us what this all means. They have limitations of time, space and objectivity, unlike the surrealists. If I learned anything in grad school, it’s that there are hundreds of ways to dissect any work of art. Magritte rails against interpretation:

“My painting is visible images which conceal nothing,” he wrote, “they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does it mean?’ It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”

Certainly, in many ways, our anatomy is our destiny. Our bodies are our lives. But rape should not be women’s destiny, nor should disease or any kind of violence. I see no mystery there. And doesn’t it matter, quite a bit, how we explain these things to each other?