“Un indovinello a figure”

Magritte e l’arte come rebus

Abstract

The relationship between surrealism and psychoanalysis can be understood from two perspectives, depending on how one approaches the dream: either as a visual representation of an otherworldly, surreal world, or as a way to access an unconscious meaning whose syntax must first and foremost be reconstructed. Based on what Freud writes in chapter 6 of The Interpretation of Dreams, where he refers to the dream as a “rebus,” this duality will first be illustrated using the paintings of Dalí and Magritte. The analysis will then focus on Magritte (with particular attention to La trahison des images) and attempt to emphasise the not primarily iconic, but rather conceptual character of his painting, which through its semantic and syntactic incongruities, shows to be a reflection on the pre-positive conditions of meaning. According to the inversion of perspective that Breton identifies in Surrealist art, as opposed to Alberti’s window, Magritte’s window opens onto the subject: it stages, through the production of a certain non-sense, “the real functioning of thought,” that condition of possibility so clearly expressed in La condition humaine.