Empire of Light
René Magritte
L’Empire des lumières
1953-4
Painting. Oil on canvas.
195.4 x 131.2 cm.
Limpero della luce
dark, nocturnal street scene against a pastel-blue, light-drenched sky spotted with fluffy cumulus clouds
no fantastic element other than the single paradoxical combination of day and night
upsets a fundamental organizing premise of life: sunlight, ordinarily the source of clarity, here causes the
confusion and unease traditionally associated with darkness… the luminosity of the sky becomes unsettling,
making the empty darkness below even more impenetrable than it would seem in a normal context
Empire of Light belongs to a succession 27 paintings (17 oil paintings and 10 gouaches) that were made
between the decades of 1940 and 1960 (specifically, 1949 and 1964). However, these artworks were not
planned as a formal series, and accordingly, that have rarely been exhibited together or in smaller
groups. There are also other works that are related but not officially considered part of the series.
At the moment, the other paintings in the series can be found in museums
and private collections in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States.
SOME ARTWORKS:
The Empire of Light (1954), oil on canvas. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.
Good Fortune or The Poison (1939), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
The Empire of Light (1948), private collection, Brussels, Belgium.
The Empire of Light II (1950), Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA.
The Empire of Light III (1951), William Alexander, New York, USA.
The Empire of Light (1953), Arnold Weissberger, New York, USA.
The Empire of Light VIII (1954), The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA.
The Empire of Light (1954), Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels, Belgium.
The Empire of Light (1958), New York, USA.
God's Drawing Room (1958), Arnold Weissberger, New York, USA.
The Empire of Light (1961), private collection, Brussels, Belgium.
The Empire of Light (n/d), private collection, Brussels, Belgium.
The Empire of Light (1967, unfinished), Magritte Museum, Brussels, Belgium.
Possible sources of inspiration:
John Atkinson Grimshaw’s (English Victorian painter) urban views at sunset.
William Degouve de Nuncques (Belgian 19th-century symbolist painter): nocturnal paintings.
Specifically The Blind House.
Caspar David Friedrich (German romantic painter). Interest!
Max Ernst’s frottage paintings, and specifically Forest (1927), where the night landscape
enigmatically includes a bright daylight sky.
André Breton (1923): “if only the sun were to come out tonight”.
Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter (1st stanza):
… the sun on the sea was shining
shining with all his might
he did his very best to make
the billows smooth and bright –
and this was odd, because it was
the middle of the night
Topic of cumulus clouds in the blue sky since 1928. (And first painting only on that in 1931.)
Intriguing similarity w/:
◦ Salvador Dalí, Night and Day Clothes, 1936.
◦ Max Ernst, Day and Night, 1941-2.
Title: “empire” alludes to “territory” or dominion.
WWII connotation?
On titles:
◦ Rejection of a single, straightforward narrative.
◦ Not a program to be carried out.
◦ Always comes after, as a confirmation of the efficacy of the image.
◦ Best title = poetic one, evoking emotion.
◦ Nothing to teach us, only surprise and enchant us.
◦ His Surrealist friends in Belgium would often title his work, like a game to them.
Economic success! No other image sold as well during his life.
Other facts
November 2024: one of the 1954 paintings (one of the biggest ones) set a new auction record for he
artist, selling for $121.16 million at Christie’s in New York.
Valued at $95 million before the auction.
Previous record: $79 million (2022).
1956 TV interview after receizing the Guggenheim Prize:“For me, the conception of a painting is an
idea of one thing or several things that can become visible through my painting. It is understood that
all ideas are not conceptions for pictures. Obviously, an idea must be sufficiently stimulating for me to
undertake to paint faithfully the thing or things I have ideated. The conception of a picture, that is, the
idea, is not visible in the picture: an idea cannot be seen with the eyes. What is represented in a picture
is what is visible to the eyes, it is the thing or things that must have been ideated. Thus, what are
represented in the picture The Empire of Light are the things I ideated, i.e. a nighttime landscape and a
sky such as we see during the day. The landscape evokes night and the sky evokes day. I call this power:
poetry. If I believe this evocation has such poetic power, it is because among other reasons, I have
always felt the greatest interest in night and in day, yet without ever having preferred one or the
other. This great personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration and astonishment.”
Peggy bought it after the Biennale in 1954, and she reported to have acquired “that wonderful painting
of Magritte with the lamp-lit house in the daytime”. (DEARBORN, 253)
She already knew about it!
He had already promised it to other 3 collectors! (Forgot? Ignored it?) So he made more!
RANDOM WEBSITE:
EFFECTS ON THE VIEWER: visual shock + confusion + disorientation.
Immediate aesthetic tension.
Eye is accustomed to coherence.
Defiance of the “common sense”.
Invitation to a deeper reflection on the nature of reality and how we perceive it. What we take for
granted. Is the world obvious or unambiguous as it seems? Hidden mysteries await beneath the
apparent banality of everyday life.
Many possible interpretations. (Because of symbolic richness!)
Illuminated house = individual consciousness, awake amidst the sleeping world.
Solitary streetlamp = clue / quest for knowledge amidst ignorance.
Triumph of light over darkness.
Bibliography
DEARBORN, Mary D. Peggy Guggenheim, Mistress of Modernism. London: Virago Press, 2005.
RUDENSTINE, Angelica Zander. Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., Publishers, 1985.
THE SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION, Masterpieces from the Peggy Guggenheim
Collection. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1996.
