Visual Subversion and Ontological Self‑Legislation: Artistic Autonomy in the Paintings of René Magritte

Abstract

Abstract

René Magritte’s paintings are frequently interpreted as philosophical puzzles or psychoanalytic symbols. Such interpretive frameworks, however, subsume his practice under a heteronomous discursive model that prioritizes external translation of meaning, obscuring the internal mechanisms underpinning his pursuit of artistic autonomy. Drawing on the autonomy‑heteronomy binary from theories of aesthetic modernity, this article analyses Magritte’s work across three dimensions: formal construction, aesthetic judgment, and social‑institutional function. It argues that Magritte’s artistic autonomy rejects the path of abstract formalism. Instead, he achieves self‑legislation by dismantling the internal logic of figural representation. His creative strategy dissolves painting’s traditional narrative efficacy at the formal level; suspends viewers’ ingrained habits of conceptual interpretation on the perceptual plane; and opens a space for non‑instrumental cognitive critique as art’s social mode of engagement. Magritte thereby unsettles Clement Greenberg’s canonical equation between artistic autonomy and abstract medium‑specific purity, demonstrating that figurative painting can equally attain ontological self‑legislation for art. His body of work further offers a substantive response to Peter Bürger’s well‑known paradox of institutional autonomy within the historical avant‑garde.