Marcel Mariën
Encyclopedia
Marcel Mariën was a Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 surrealist (later Situationist), poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, essayist, photographer, collagist, filmmaker, and maker of objects.

Mariën is one of the most intriguing and elusive figures in the Belgian wing of the Surrealist movement. He was not only an artist, but also a publisher, a bookseller, a sailor, a journalist in China and an elaborate Surrealist prankster.

Early life

Marcel Mariën was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920, a single child of a poor family. His mother wanted him to leave school as soon as possible so that he could start bringing money into the home. Aged 15, Marien became apprentice to a photographer – initially undertaking menial roles, but later setting up a home studio to develop his own projects.

In 1937, he first encountered the surrealist paintings of René Magritte
René Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...

 in exhibition and – inspired by André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

’s Surrealist Manifesto
Surrealist Manifesto
Two Surrealist Manifestos were issued by the Surrealist movement, in 1924 and 1929. The first was written by André Breton, the second was supervised by him. Breton drafted a third Surrealist manifesto which was never issued.-First manifesto:...

- traveled to Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 to seek out the artist. He soon began corresponding with Magritte, who was 20 years his senior, and was warmly welcomed into the close-knit Belgian Surrealist group. Within a year, he had his own work included in the Surrealist group exhibition, Surrealist Objects and Poems, in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Initially, he could not paint or draw, so he instead used a wide variety of media, including collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

, decoupage
Decoupage
Decoupage is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf and so on. Commonly an object like a small box or an item of furniture is covered by cutouts from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers...

, drawing, painting, toys, household items and even a reproduction of a Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

 fresco. With this anarchistic approach, he was acknowledged as the initiator of the Surrealist technique of étrécissements
Surrealist techniques
Surrealism in art, poetry, and literature uses numerous techniques and games to provide inspiration. Many of these are said to free imagination by producing a creative process free of conscious control. The importance of the unconscious as a source of inspiration is central to the nature of...

. Throughout his career, he produced hundreds of humorous, puzzling and provocative tableaux that challenge and mock preconceptions and taboos.

In 1939 he enlisted in the Belgian Army to fight in WWII, but was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Germany. Following his release, he returned to Brussels and, in 1943, wrote and published the very first monograph on Magritte.

The Art of Mariën

Mariën’s early attempts at expressing his ideas in photography were unsuccessful. It was not until 1943 that he produced his first photograph with a distinctive personal vision, “De Sade à Lénine”, an image of a woman cutting a slice of bread, the loaf gripped tightly against her naked torso, the blade pointing at her left breast. Mariën commented, “the knife passes from de Sade to Lenin”.

It was pure Surrealism, marked with the two themes that would characterise his photography: the everyday object stripped of its traditional function and the female body as an instrument of creation.

Despite this and other successful photographs, Mariën would soon abandon photography to concentrate on object making, drawing and writing. Forever a restless spirit, 1951 he signed on for two years as a sailor on a Danish cargo ship. In 1962 he lived in New York for a year before relocating to Communist China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 from 1963 until 1965, where he worked as a translator on the French edition of the magazine China Under Construction until his disillusionment with Maoism
Maoism
Maoism, also known as the Mao Zedong Thought , is claimed by Maoists as an anti-Revisionist form of Marxist communist theory, derived from the teachings of the Chinese political leader Mao Zedong . Developed during the 1950s and 1960s, it was widely applied as the political and military guiding...

.

In 1959, in a further attempt to challenge traditional attitudes, he produced and directed the film, L'Imitation du cinema. A combination of sexual and religious imagery, it caused a scandal in Belgium and was banned in France. Even with the support of the Kinsey Institute, it proved impossible to have the film shown in the United States.

As a Writer, Publisher & Essayist

Although Marien worked as an artist across many media, some of the most notable achievements throughout his career were as a chronicler of the Belgian Surrealists' activities and a publisher of their writings.

In 1943, Marien had published the very first monograph on Magritte. In 1954 he founded the magazine, Les Lèvres Nues, and directed his review Le Ciel Bleu with Christian Dotremont
Christian Dotremont
Christian Dotremont, , was a Belgian painter and poet who was born in Tervuren, Belgium. He was a founding member of the group Cobra, and later became well known for his painted poems, which he called logograms....

 and Paul Colinet. He published the writings of such Belgian Surrealists as Paul Nougé
Paul Nougé
Paul Nougé was a Belgian poet, philosopher and surrealist photographer who heavily influenced the Belgian Surrealist School of which he was a member....

, Louis Scutenaire
Louis Scutenaire
Louis Scutenaire was a poet, anarchist, surrealist and civil servant. Born Jean Émile Louis Scutenaire in Ollignies, Belgium; died in Brussels.-Life:...

 and André Souris
André Souris
André Souris was a Belgian composer, conductor, musicologist, and writer associated with the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

, as well as Magritte himself, in a series that eventually extended to hundreds of titles.

In 1979, Marien published L'Activité Surréaliste en Belgique, a chronological record of all the documents, manifestos, tracts and articles pertaining to the surrealist movement in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 that appeared between 1924 and 1950.

Even as late as 1983, the appearance of his outrageously libelous autobiography in Le Radeau de la Mémoire was able to cause a scandal.

Mariën the prankster

Mariën and his fellow Surrealists loved making jokes. In 1953, Mariën went to the Belgian coast, where he distributed false bank notes printed by René and Paul Magritte. In 1962, the joke was on Magritte when Mariën and Leo Dohmen produced a tract, “La Grande Baisse”, to coincide with a major retrospective of Magritte’s work in Knokke
Knokke
Knokke is one of a group of communities that are all grouped in the administrative community Knokke-Heist, in the province of West Flanders in Flanders, Belgium. Knokke itself has 15,653 inhabitants .Knokke-Heist has 33,818 inhabitants ....

. Presented as written by Magritte himself, it announced drastic discounts on the artist’s major paintings and offered the chance to order them in different sizes.

Even leading Surrealists, amongst them André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

, failed to grasp the joke and praised Magritte for this undertaking. Magritte was furious when he found out and the 25-year friendship between Magritte and Mariën was over.

A Return to Photography

Mariën was never a practical man and was helped by his partner Hedwige Benedix in the production of his art work. In 1983, a year after her death, he again took up photography as a quick and immediate way of expressing his ideas. He carried on where he had left off in 1942 and began producing one extraordinary image after another, simple yet elegant surreal images with free associations of imagery and text.

“Don’t pay attention to the photography”, commented Mariën, referring to the technical side of the medium. He wanted to capture his ideas immediately and his images are all the more poetic and powerful for it.

External links

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