Is the Magritte painting, Not To Be Reproduced (La Reproduction interdite) 1937, dystalgic or nostalgic?
Discuss.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
La Reproduction Interdite
Posted by dystalgia at 8:14 AM
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Is the Magritte painting, Not To Be Reproduced (La Reproduction interdite) 1937, dystalgic or nostalgic?
Discuss.
7 comments:
I think that it describes a very present moment at first glance. I feel like that guy most mornings. The suit and haircut induce a sense of nostalgia, but I certainly couldn't ascribe that quality to the painting in general. I wonder if we can call the combination of nostalgia for the style of dress in the painting with the anxiety present in the image, "dystalgia." I'm going to say, maybe. I am however, nostalgic for when I was capable of giving a less ambivalent answer.
First impulse? Nostalgic. Emphatically so, as it's a Magritte. World-views are generally expanded (distored?) by that brand of surrealism in the late-teens. At that age, every other thing is a revelation, and Magritte further solidifies your nascent conviction that in art, everything is not only permitted but encouraged.
However, sitting here now, this picture actually makes me nostalgic for when I believed that.
bret....painfully true on both counts: everything being permitted and encouraged, and your nostalgia/lament for your loss of faith in the ideal...
But if this is any consolation- someone once said Blake's idea of Heaven was a place in which everything is permitted and forgivness is the only law. Maybe as an art practice this can never be truly attained, but somehow it can be attempted i'd say.
i picked the painting for this reason: i would say nostalgia is primarily a solipsistic condition. Sure it can become a collective condition too...the rememberance of an experience in common etc..
But i think nostalgia at least begins in the singular feedback loop between one's self and one's memory/experience.
So although i would agree that we can have nostalgic feelings for an old painting such as this one, I think the painting itself is dystalgic (despite our being savvy to the surrealist tropes involved).. i like to think that it breaks the typical feedback loop of the self (reflection) by impeding/ignoring its own gaze so to speak. So i think the condition of dystalgia begins in the rupture of memorial experience, whether it is recent or distant past.
Funny...I can't help think of the scene in that movie sexy beast where the villan turns on his mark and says:
"Stare at the back of your own fucking head"
Does anyone know what the book is?
This painting actually has nothing to do with new-freedom/squashed freedom banalities. My first response was lazily aimed at a type, not at the artwork.
There are so many signs for looking back in this picture, so many nostalgic cues, but the surprise in the mirror knocks you off that sepia-toned track.
This painting is dystalgic because is begins with nostalgia but takes you elsewhere. That new position is as yet undefined, but being aware that you've diverged from nostalgia is a good first step.
Also, never saw Sexy Beast. Queue worthy?
I think the book is Proust (rimshot).
the book is the european equivalent to the zagat restaurant guide of the day.....well actually...it is Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym, by E A Poe...thank god it isnt proust...nothing against proust but it would have made the painting languish in nostalgia completely.. which would suck in my opinion....
sexy beast is worth renting...it is flawed- some bad editing and artsy indulgences, but the story is good and so is the acting....vaguely reminds me of a movie called The Hit with Terrence Stamp and John Hurt...another british gangster film, set in spain
Its a hard call on this one - at the time of the painting, definitely a picture of dystalgia - looking at the back of a man looking at himself looking back - not seeing himself in the present. Euan, I think you've are right on about the individual experience of dystalgia. This makes sense to me as alot of the dystalgia I hear comes from individuals' "youth" or their "time" in history - which becomes the "best" to that person; and for them, it probably is (for both the sense of comfort and sometimes a sense of arrogance) - a way to ease the pain of change.
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