Gagosian: Magritte – This Is Still Not a Pipe

It seems like Gagosian have already won ‘the best show of the season’ with the freshly-opened Magritte exhibition. ‘This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte’ reinvents the famous title of Magritte’s painting and runs from 24 September to 12 December 2026 and brings the Belgian Surrealist into dialogue with artists including Matthew Barney, Harold Ancart, Maurizio Cattelan, David Hammons, Yoko Ono, Mona Hatoum, Ed Ruscha and Issy Wood, Joanna Wos´, and Joseph Yaeger.

The London presentation also draws attention to Magritte’s relationship with the city. La Lampe philosophique was painted shortly before the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, one of the major early presentations of Surrealism in Britain. The exhibition is planned in collaboration with Charly Herscovici, president of the Fondation Magritte, and other scholars of Magritte’s work.

In this stunning show, René Magritte’s work into dialogue with that of more than 40 contemporary artists in a new exhibition at its Grosvenor Hill gallery in London, running from 24 September to 12 December 2026. This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte examines the Belgian Surrealist’s continuing influence on contemporary art and visual culture.

Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Magritte and curated by Jasper Sharp and Bernard Lagrange, the exhibition brings together paintings, works on paper and sculpture by Magritte alongside works by artists from different generations. Several of the contemporary works have been made specifically for the exhibition.

The Magritte presentation spans much of the artist’s career, beginning with Les Fleurs du voyage (The Flowers of the Journey, 1926), a symbolic landscape painted shortly after his arrival in Paris. The work was subsequently included in Magritte’s first solo exhibition at Galerie Le Centaure in Brussels in 1927.

Other early works include L’Ombre céleste (The Celestial Shade, 1927), painted only weeks after Magritte’s arrival in Paris and later included in the Museum of Modern Art’s influential exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism in 1936–37, and Le Parfum de l’abîme (The Scent of the Abyss, 1928), which was formerly owned by André Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement.

The exhibition also includes La Malédiction (The Curse, 1931), an early single-panel painting devoted to a cloud-filled sky, and La Clef des songes (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1935), painted for Magritte’s first solo exhibition in the United States, held at Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1936.

La Lampe philosophique (The Philosopher’s Lamp, 1936), often interpreted as a conceptual self-portrait, is another key work. Painted shortly before the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London, it exemplifies Magritte’s interest in the relationship between language, representation and perception.

The exhibition includes La Trahison des images. Ceci continue de ne pas être une pipe (The Treachery of Images. This Is Still Not a Pipe, 1952), which revisits one of Magritte’s most recognisable subjects. The work updates the wording associated with the artist’s famous pipe imagery, reinforcing his longstanding investigation into the distinction between an object and its representation.

A selection of works by contemporary artists including Isabelle Albuquerque, Matthew Barney, Maurizio Cattelan, George Condo, John Currin, Mona Hatoum, Jeff Koons, Glenn Ligon, Sarah Lucas, Yoko Ono, Ed Ruscha, Dana Schutz, and Jordan Wolfson.

Also on view is La Marche triomphale (The Triumphant March, 1948), from Magritte’s short-lived vache period, characterised by deliberately crude forms and vivid colours. L’Empire des lumières (The Dominion of Light, 1961), loaned from the Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna, is the final painting in Magritte’s series of landscapes in which daytime and nighttime coexist. It is also the only work in the series to feature a bowler-hatted figure silhouetted against the sky.

A number of works have been made specifically for the exhibition. These include paintings by Ancart, Geerk, Katz, Mulleady, Rossetti, Schutz, Taburet, Weyant, Woś and Yaeger, as well as sculpture and objects by Albuquerque, Da Corte, Fung and Matsubara and photography by Taguchi.

The exhibition consequently presents Magritte not simply as a historical Surrealist but as an ongoing reference point for artists working across painting, sculpture, photography and conceptual practices. His influence has also extended beyond the art world into advertising, design, fashion and other forms of visual culture. Spectacular!

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