“The land of Magritte”: The Surrealist Event in Francophone Belgium

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to delve into Belgium’s imaginary from a historical perspective to better understand how Belgium’s pictorial heritage nurtured a cultural imagotype on the one hand and consequently laid ground for surrealism to happen on the other. By focusing on imagotypes the research will tackle both sociological and aesthetical issues, showing how they participate to the collective adhesion of an imaginary often confounded with a cultural identity.