Over 100 years after André Breton printed his Surrealist Manifesto, the artwork world stays extra enchanted than ever by the genre-defying artwork motion. The e-book’s 2024 anniversary spawned numerous exhibits on Surrealism and its main figures, together with René Magritte, whose work has just lately been exhibited from Houston, Texas, to Sydney, Australia.
Notoriously tight-lipped when it got here to discussing or analysing his enigmatic follow, Magritte solely spoke publicly about his work 3 times. An important of those events was on the DEK Royal Museum of High-quality Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) in 1938, when he was 40. Though the lecture was by no means recorded, the museum possesses the slides and textual content, meticulously transcribed by the artist’s fellow Belgian Surrealist, Marcel Mariën.
Now, because of synthetic intelligence (AI), KMSKA guests can hearken to Magritte’s 1938 lecture in his personal voice and think about the slides of their entirety, as a part of the exhibition Magritte. La ligne de vie. On view till 22 February 2026, the present options greater than 100 works, together with spectacular personal and public loans from throughout the artist’s profession, in addition to a bit dedicated to Surrealists hailing from Antwerp, comparable to Mariën, impressed by the grasp.
Given the proliferation of Magritte exhibitions, KMSKA and Xavier Canonne, an authority on Surrealism, questioned how they might make the most of this treasure trove of works to inform a unique story. They settled on an method that isn’t strictly chronological or thematic, however relatively distinctive in its capacity to place the artist in his personal phrases. Working with the KMSKA curator Lisa van Gerven, Canonne structured the present round key factors from Magritte’s 1938 lecture: his titles, the physique, collages, phrases and pictures, amongst others.
All of this culminates within the room the place the artist’s AI voice will be heard. The museum’s technical staff spent a number of months reconstructing the sound from different recorded interviews. Caronne says the outcome was convincing sufficient that when performed a pattern over the telephone, the Belgian painter André Bosmans—considered one of Magritte’s remaining shut buddies—exclaimed “that’s René”!
It was important for Caronne that the AI intervention was respectful and remained as devoted to the artist as attainable. The staff solely produced the lecture in French with English and Dutch subtitles, and selected to not utilise Magritte’s voice past the phrases he truly spoke. They prevented, for instance, having him narrate different components of the exhibition.
KMSKA exhibition supervisor Veerle De Meester tells The Artwork Newspaper that the museum’s use of AI additionally had so as to add one thing substantial to the present. “Expertise may also help clarify tales that in any other case wouldn’t be informed,” she says, noting how quickly AI has developed for the reason that exhibition was conceived two and a half years in the past.
“It’s very fascinating to listen to how Magritte talks about his work, and it was, after all, very distinctive that the lecture was given inside our museum. It’s truly unusual that we didn’t do an exhibition about this earlier, however perhaps we wouldn’t have had the AI know-how if we had the present ten years in the past.”
Magritte. La ligne de vie is at DEK Royal Museum of High-quality Arts Antwerp till 22 February 2026
