pam on Nostr: René Magritte is perhaps one of my favorite surrealist artists. I first encountered ...
René Magritte is perhaps one of my favorite surrealist artists. I first encountered his work, "The Son of Man," that was re-enacted in the movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" (Pierce Brosnan / Rene Russo).
As I explored his work further, I love how he thinks differently and gets people questioning everything. It's rare to find people who expand your perspectives so profoundly.
Many of his paintings manipulate space and perspective: an apple too big for its box, a train emerging from a wall. He was also interested in the boundary between rationality and irrationality, such as a house closed up at night against a bright blue daytime sky.
Magritte's work has touches of Dadaism (the avant-garde movement preceding surrealism) and some explorations of cubism (Picasso).
He loved poetry and Edgar Allan Poe and often explored the limitations of the meaning of words and their visual representation. In his famous piece "The Treachery of Images" he wrote "This is not a pipe" below a picture of a pipe, to show that it is just an image, not the object itself.
In real life, Magritte was happily married to his wife for 45 years. In his paintings though, he conveyed a sense of conflict in romance, for example in "The Lovers II," two people are passionately kissing but their faces are covered with cloth. Interpretations of this piece often vary - blinded by love, forbidden passion. This painting lingered in my mind for days, which made me look into Magritte's work further
Something Rene did not follow suit of the Surrelism culture is their need for psycho-analysing everything as he wanted to paint abstractly to provoke questions rather than provide answers.
But many wondered if his distance from any type of Freudian psycho-analysing theories had to do with his troubled childhood, with his mother's suicide by drowning, her body found with her dress covering her face—a motif that appears in some of his works.
Ironically, Magritte didn't enjoy the act of painting but loved the process of imagination and idea creation. He also wasn't fond of museums or art galleries. He also disliked the surrealist culture of drinking and partying, and preferred a secluded life with his wife and occasionally meeting other surrealists like Dalí.
Magritte was comfortable being different and not conforming to the definitions set by society or his peers, and I love that about him and just about anyone who has this courage.
Magritte was poor and relatively unknown for most of his life. To pay the bills, he took up advertising and had traits of advertisement images in his painting. Only in his later years did he gain recognition and hit fame. Andy Warhol is said to have followed in his footsteps, adapting elements from advertising into his art.
Some of my favorite works by René Magritte include:
The Son of Man (French: Le Fils de l'homme) – 1964
The Lovers II – 1928
Evening Dress – 1954
The Mystery of the Ordinary – 1938
The Kiss – 1951
Clear Ideas - 1958
The Blank Signature - 1965
As I explored his work further, I love how he thinks differently and gets people questioning everything. It's rare to find people who expand your perspectives so profoundly.
Many of his paintings manipulate space and perspective: an apple too big for its box, a train emerging from a wall. He was also interested in the boundary between rationality and irrationality, such as a house closed up at night against a bright blue daytime sky.
Magritte's work has touches of Dadaism (the avant-garde movement preceding surrealism) and some explorations of cubism (Picasso).
He loved poetry and Edgar Allan Poe and often explored the limitations of the meaning of words and their visual representation. In his famous piece "The Treachery of Images" he wrote "This is not a pipe" below a picture of a pipe, to show that it is just an image, not the object itself.
In real life, Magritte was happily married to his wife for 45 years. In his paintings though, he conveyed a sense of conflict in romance, for example in "The Lovers II," two people are passionately kissing but their faces are covered with cloth. Interpretations of this piece often vary - blinded by love, forbidden passion. This painting lingered in my mind for days, which made me look into Magritte's work further
Something Rene did not follow suit of the Surrelism culture is their need for psycho-analysing everything as he wanted to paint abstractly to provoke questions rather than provide answers.
But many wondered if his distance from any type of Freudian psycho-analysing theories had to do with his troubled childhood, with his mother's suicide by drowning, her body found with her dress covering her face—a motif that appears in some of his works.
Ironically, Magritte didn't enjoy the act of painting but loved the process of imagination and idea creation. He also wasn't fond of museums or art galleries. He also disliked the surrealist culture of drinking and partying, and preferred a secluded life with his wife and occasionally meeting other surrealists like Dalí.
Magritte was comfortable being different and not conforming to the definitions set by society or his peers, and I love that about him and just about anyone who has this courage.
Magritte was poor and relatively unknown for most of his life. To pay the bills, he took up advertising and had traits of advertisement images in his painting. Only in his later years did he gain recognition and hit fame. Andy Warhol is said to have followed in his footsteps, adapting elements from advertising into his art.
Some of my favorite works by René Magritte include:
The Son of Man (French: Le Fils de l'homme) – 1964
The Lovers II – 1928
Evening Dress – 1954
The Mystery of the Ordinary – 1938
The Kiss – 1951
Clear Ideas - 1958
The Blank Signature - 1965