cover image The Portable Magritte

The Portable Magritte

Rene Magritte. Universe Publishing(NY), $29.95 (432pp) ISBN 978-0-7893-0665-4

""By the standards of Surrealist bohemia and Surrealist chic, [Magritte] might as well have been a grocer,"" writes Time art critic Robert Hughes in his brief introduction to The Portable Magritte, a glossy, compact collection of 400 works spanning the career of the phlegmatic Belgian painter. Familiar images like the clouded iris of The False Mirror, the seamlessly conjoined canvases and landscapes of The Human Condition and all the men in bowler hats are supplemented by lesser known experiments in cubism, impressionism and expressionism.