Thirteen years before Andy Warhol sensationally asserted “I want to be a machine”, Belgian Surrealist René Magritte envisioned the emergence of an extraordinary array of automated contraptions capable of cranking out any commodity that modern culture could possibly want – an inventory of make-believe engines that included a “universal machine for making paintings”. Seventy years later, the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid is exploring the implications of the Surrealist’s dream through the assembly of 65 canvases, photographs and films that, together, comprise ‘The Magritte Machine’. By breaking down Magritte’s imaginary engine into six component parts – the museum, the silhouette, the window, the mechanism, mimicry, and the mask, which erases and projects the face – the show’s organisers hope to scare up the ever-evasive ghost in the machine of genius.
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