Artist Blog Post

R E N  E  M A G R I T T E

René François-Ghislain Magritte was born November 21, 1898 in Lessines Belgium. His father,  Léopold, encouraged his early interest in drawing but his mother was heavily depressed. At the young age of fourteen, Rene lost his mother. She fled in the night and threw herself over the bridge into the river Sambre. Rene was deeply scarred by his mother's death, and she will appear later in his paintings. 

A year after he met his future wife, Georgette Berger, Rene enrolled at The Academié Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussel. He wanted to master the 'proper' techniques of painting that was usually attributed to artists who worked in the figurative style, before breaking free of them. He was inspired by many artists that influenced his style, but it was when he discovered Giorgio De Chirico's surrealist works that he found true inspiration. He decided to make each of his paintings a visual poem, a quality he found in De Chirico's works.

 By chance, Rene stumbled upon Georgette at an art supply store in 1920. She was a wallpaper artist, and soon after reconnecting they married in the fall of 1923.

In 1929 Magritte joined other artists and writers who were part of the surrealist movement in Paris. His art was different from the others, special,  because he was incredibly skilled at painting realistic objects and figures. What set him apart from other painters was the way he played with placement of the objects in reality. He left the objects in tacked but the way he painted them played with logic and and instead of leading to answers, they only led to confusion and questions as to why.

Over his career Rene Magritte had created over a thousand paintings that played with the reality and the mind. At age 69, Magritte died in his bed in Brussels from Pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967.

"Like Salvador Dali, Magritte's work will forever come to mind when we hear the word "surreal"."

 What I really like about Rene are the questions that are attached to each of his paintings. They are all so strange and different looking without looking crazy. The objects he uses in his paintings are very ordinary objects, but he places them in an unusual setting, or puts them with other objects that don't belong. It makes me wonder why he did this and makes me question his train of thought while painting. I like paintings that make me think, because most artists paint a picture that looks straight forward, even if there's a hidden meaning behind it, so I never really take a minute to think about what the artist was thinking about while painting. Rene Magritte's paintings, however, are abnormal and outright weird to look. They stick in my brain longer than the usual painting because of how different they are.

A classic example of Rene's works would be The Son of Man. I love this painting because how normal yet abnormal it is. It makes me wonder what the man's face looks like behind the apple, and why he decided to place the apple obstructing the man's view. This painting looks very simple, but from the way Magritte placed the apple it became entirely different.

I found this one humorous because in The treachery of images the caption below says 'This is not a pipe". Well, from looking at it, it certainly looks like a pipe to me. What else could it be. With the use of the words underneath his painting, Magritte turned a simple object into a confusing work of art. if this isn't a pipe, it makes me wonder what it's supposed to be. So now I start imaging what else it could be, even though it still clearly looks like a pipe. I like how Rene twists my mind with his paintings which makes them more interesting to view.

The Black Signature is a painting I've seen before but never knew who painted it. It looks ordinary, a women on a horse. But then you really look at it and you realize the horse is divided up but the trees, but you have to question is it the trees that are behind the horse, or is the horse behind the trees. I could stare at this picture forever and still never understand it. It plays with my eyes, especially the middle of the horse where the women is still and it looks like she could just be in front of that tree, or you can see through the tree to her. This is a really good twist of reality in my opinion, which is why it is one of my favorites.