In October, 1924, André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto in Paris, demanding a break from the conformities of the past and arguing for an art that pulled liberally from Freud, Dadaism, and Automatism. A febrile cohort of artists sprung up around Breton with the likes of Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Paul Éluard, and Luis Buñuel all critiquing and lampooning the society around them.
A century on, Christie’s looks back on the arrival of the Surrealism with an auction of three works that represent the movement at different stages of the 20th century. Collectively, auction house said the works offered at the 20th Century Evening Sale on Nov 19 represent “the finest examples of sculpture, painting, and works on paper.”
Leading the pack is Magritte’s gouache L’empire des lumières (1956), part of the Belgian’s two decade-long series that captured impossible scenes of nocturnal streetscapes resting beneath sunlit skies. Breton wrote in his manifesto: “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality”—and Magritte meets this moment in the painting with a darkened house surrounded by afternoon clouds.
The piece been granted an upper estimate of $8 million. If realized, the sale would set another record for a Magritte work on paper, surpassing the result of Christie’s February 2023 sale of Le Retour (ca. 1950), which brought in $7.4 million.
Marcel Duchamp, In Advance of the Broken Arm (2015). Photo: Christie’s.
The earliest of the three works, Marcel Duchamp’s canonical In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), in some ways presages the Surrealist movement. Duchamp had been challenging artistic convention by displaying mass-produced objects as readymade sculptures for a couple of years when he encountered snow shovels piled up outside a New York hardware store. Recently arrived in the city, the sight amused Duchamp and he hung one from his studio’s ceiling, its name a playful reference to what might happen in the object’s absence. The work is estimated at between $2 million and $3 million.
The third work is Les chasseurs au bord de la nuit (1928), which was painted shortly after Magritte’s move to Paris in order to better participate in the burgeoning Surrealist scene. It depicts a pair of faceless hunters pressed up in desperation against a gray wall. Beyond, a brown barren landscape stretches endlessly. It’s considered one of Magritte’s early Surrealist masterpieces and is estimated between $8 million and $12 million.
Rene Magritte, L’empire des lumières (1954). Photo: Christie’s.
For good measure, Christie’s is offering up a further work: Rene Magritte’s L’empire des lumières (1954), as part of its sale of the estate of Mica Ertegun, a celebrated interior designer and prodigious art collector. It’s estimated the work could sell for more than $95 million at a single-owner sale on November 19. If so, it would break the price of $79.8 million that was paid for L’empire des lumières (1961) at Sotheby’s in 2022.
Spread over three days in November and December, the Ertegun auction also includes works by Joan Miró, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha.