The Hand-axe Paintings with Prehistorian Duncan Caldwell.

Wednesday, August 23 at 5:00: The Prehistoric Secret of Magritte’s Boulders: The Hand-axe Paintings with Prehistorian Duncan Caldwell.

It is astonishing that nobody has pointed out that most of the huge isolated boulders which appear in René Magritte’s paintings between 1951 and 1964 are depictions of prehistoric hand-axes. The portrayals are so accurate that several, including ones shown in such iconic works as The Sense of Reality and The Castle of the Pyrenees could be used as illustrations in a book on ancient tool typology.

In Duncan Caldwell’s new book, The Prehistoric Secret of Magritte’s Boulders: The Hand-axe Paintings (late 2023, Peabody Museum at Harvard and the University of Chicago Press) he explores the implications of Magritte's choices, which relate both to prehistory and the World Wars - making the hand-axe/boulders stand both as a testament to Magritte’s fascination with prehistoric forms and in mute challenge, making us feel as uneasy as if we were encountering ghosts or prophets. Although it may be hard to appreciate the degree to which loss, horror, and doom hung over Magritte’s world when he created this series, its looming stones still bear witness and concentrate the strangeness of our universe into archetypal forms. Magritte seems to be saying that the implications of man’s first breakthrough now haunt our entire existence, as dense and light as consciousness or the mystery underlying reality, which we have all had to live with since the mind and its first highly designed (and lethal) product - the hand-axe - were born. 

Email tthorpe@clamsnet.org for more information. Free. Sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Library. 508-645-3360.