Free Republic

René Magritte’s Surrealist masterpiece L’empire des lumières sold for a record £59.4 million (US$79.8 million) at a Sotheby’s sale on Wednesday, achieving a world auction record for the artist. The 1961 painting, with a paradoxical image of darkened home lit from within yet under a bright blue sky of floating clouds, was sought by three telephone bidders over more than seven minutes before a winning hammer offer of £51.5 million, before fees, was secured by Alex Branczik, the auction house’s chairman of modern and contemporary art in Asia. Magritte’s previous auction record of US$26.8 million was achieved for a 1937...

Rene Magritte’s paradoxical painting “L’Empire des Lumieres” (Dominion of Light) – depicting a night-time street under a bright blue sky – will be auctioned in London next week and could bring a record price for a work by the Belgian surrealist. The painting, described by auction house Sotheby’s as “a masterpiece of 20th-century art”, has an estimate in excess of more than 45 million pounds ($60 million). It is the star attraction of Sotheby’s spring auction of modern and contemporary art that also features six paintings by impressionist Claude Monet as well as works by Picasso, Van Gogh, David Hockney...

As the sixth class in this mini-art appreciation set of lectures, it’s time to consider Dada and Surrealism. The roots for this movement of art fantasy goes back to Henri Rousseau and de Chirico in the late 19th and first decades of the 20th century. These unusual, dream-like settings provoke our imagination more than the emotion of Expressionism and the intellectual structure of Cubism. Henri Rousseau Sleeping Gypsy and de Chirico Mystery and Melancholy of a Street Note in the street images, how the long shadows create a mysterious, imminent mood, and that the “girl” is only a shadow of...