Over 100 years after André Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto, the art world remains more enchanted than ever by the genre-defying art movement. The book’s 2024 anniversary spawned countless shows on Surrealism and its leading figures, including René Magritte, whose work has recently been exhibited from Houston, Texas, to Sydney, Australia.
Notoriously tight-lipped when it came to discussing or analysing his enigmatic practice, Magritte only spoke publicly about his work three times. The most important of these occasions was at the DEK Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (KMSKA) in 1938, when he was 40. Although the lecture was never recorded, the museum possesses the slides and text, meticulously transcribed by the artist’s fellow Belgian Surrealist, Marcel Mariën.
Now, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), KMSKA visitors can listen to Magritte’s 1938 lecture in his own voice and view the slides in their entirety, as part of the exhibition Magritte. La ligne de vie. On view until 22 February 2026, the show features more than 100 works, including impressive private and public loans from across the artist’s career, as well as a section devoted to Surrealists hailing from Antwerp, such as Mariën, inspired by the master.
Given the proliferation of Magritte exhibitions, KMSKA and Xavier Canonne, an authority on Surrealism, wondered how they could take advantage of this treasure trove of works to tell a different story. They settled on an approach that isn’t strictly chronological or thematic, but rather unique in its ability to put the artist in his own words. Working with the KMSKA curator Lisa van Gerven, Canonne structured the show around key points from Magritte’s 1938 lecture: his titles, the body, collages, words and images.
All of this culminates in the room where the artist’s AI voice can be heard. The museum’s technical team spent several months reconstructing the sound from other recorded interviews. Caronne says the result was convincing enough that when played a sample over the phone, the Belgian painter André Bosmans—one of Magritte’s remaining close friends—exclaimed “that’s René”!
It was essential for Caronne that the AI intervention was respectful and remained as faithful to the artist as possible. The team only produced the lecture in French with English and Dutch subtitles, and chose not to utilise Magritte’s voice beyond the words he actually spoke. They avoided, for example, having him narrate other parts of the exhibition.
KMSKA exhibition manager Veerle De Meester tells The Art Newspaper that the museum’s use of AI also had to add something substantial to the show. “Technology can help explain stories that otherwise wouldn’t be told,” she says, noting how rapidly AI has evolved since the exhibition was conceived two and a half years ago.
“It’s very interesting to hear how Magritte talks about his work, and it was, of course, very exceptional that the lecture was given within our museum. It’s actually strange that we didn’t do an exhibition about this earlier, but maybe we wouldn’t have had the AI technology if we had the show ten years ago.”
- Magritte. La ligne de vie is at DEK Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp until 22 February 2026
