Marcel Mariën

The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is surrealism, belletristic literature and poetry. Places of work recorded in the authority are Brussels. Work by Marcel Mariën is recorded in the collections of Tate, National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (MSK) and Mu.ZEE - Kunstmuseum aan Zee.

• Name — Marcel Mariën • Born — 29 April 1920 • Birthplace — Antwerp, Belgium • Died — 19 September 1993 • Place of death — Brussels, Belgium • Field — Artist, photographer, essayist • Movement — Surrealism

• Illustration — Signature of Marcel Mariën Marcel Mariën was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920. He was a single child from a poor family. At the age of fifteen, Mariën left school to become a photographer's apprentice. In 1937, after viewing an exhibition of the surrealist paintings of René Magritte, he travelled to Brussels to apprentice for the painter. The next year, he exhibited his own artwork titled L'INTROUVABLE (The Untraceable) alongside Magritte in the Surrealist group exhibition Surrealist Objects and Poems in London. Mariën enlisted in the Belgian Army in Antwerp in January 1939 and served for seventeen months during World War II. During the German invasion of Belgium, he looked after the casualties at the hospital of Antwerp before being evacuated, bringing along two large bags of books which he refused to leave behind. Upon reaching Dunkirk, he was taken captive and held as a prisoner of war in Görlitz for nine months. Following his release, he returned to Brussels and, in 1943, wrote and published the very first monograph on Magritte. • Illustration — Le Double Usage (1992), an example of Marien's surrealist photography • Illustration — 'Le Bouts-Rimes' (1985) by Marcel 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 characterize 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, in 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 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. 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.

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. 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, 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.

Marcel Mariën is recorded with the occupation film director. Recorded as playwright, poet, photographer, painter and film director.