l'Avenir de la Photographie – Variations on a theme by René Magritte

In 1984, I saw a work by René Magritte at the Tate Modern gallery in London titled “L'avenir des statues.” It is a ready-made plaster replica of Napoleon’s death mask painted in oil with clouds floating in a clear, blue sky. I was enthralled by the idea of covering a face with a sky and the idea of using a sculpture as a canvas for an unrelated image. I bought a picture postcard of the work at the museum store and have kept it ever since.

As my artistic practice matures, I have experimented with various photographic media and techniques and, while experimenting with Polaroid emulsion transfers, memories of that sky covering Napoleon’s face resurfaced. Could I do a transfer to a three-dimensional object?

My initial plan was to sculpt a small face for the purpose. After all, how could I possibly get a replica of Napoleon’s death mask small enough to be covered by a Polaroid? But a quick Internet search revealed that the Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh had a blank cast in their collection of the very death mask that Magritte had used and they had made a 3D scan freely available for download. I downloaded the file, made adjustments for scale, and had it 3D printed. I used the resulting plastic replica to create a mold from which I could make many plaster casts.

Although I became obsessed with the technical challenges of the process, the connection with Magritte’s work intrigued me even more. Here I was working with tiny replicas of Napoleon’s death mask. There is a direct if circuitous line from Dr Francis Burton’s original cast in 1821 to the objects I’m manufacturing in my studio. Magritte was obsessed with finding the poetic secrets and latent life in objects and their combinations. By combining this object from Magritte’s work with images from my camera, I seek to discover my own poetic secrets, the affinities between the plaster face and the images I cover it with.

Magritte famously eschewed any attempts at finding symbolism in his work. Although the combination of a death mask with photographs is rife with opportunities for symbolic interpretation and expression, I’ve chosen to follow in Magritte’s footsteps and resist the temptation to make this work about something in particular. Magritte wrote:

“People who look for symbolic meanings fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the image. No doubt they sense this mystery, but they wish to get rid of it. They are afraid. By asking ‘what does this mean?’ they express a wish that everything be understandable. But if one does not reject the mystery, one has quite a different response. One asks other things.”

In the words of Iris DeMent’s song, “I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”