The end

New visioguides at Magritte's Museum

VIDEO, click here

To finish , here is Myriam Dom, she will be my tutor during my internship.
In this video, she introduces the new visioguides which will be available at Magritte's musuem at the beginning of June. With those touchpads, the deaf and hard of hearing will be able to visit the museum. This new stool is the equivalent of an audio-guide. Morever, every one can use it because the explanations are written in three different languages.  

René Magritte and I

I think you guessed it, I really like René Magritte's work. I like his incongruous pictures.
In 2008, as I was studying design at ESAAT, in Roubaix, one of our teachers asked us to create our self-portrait after the manner of an artist. That is not a surprise, I chose... René Magritte ! To be more precise, I drew my inspiration from Le double secret.
I also used the red curtain and the clouds, often depicted in Magritte's works. Here is my work. It was really funny to do that. 

Two years later, I was still studying at ESAAT. We had to imagine the scenography of an exhibition. I chose to exhibit Magritte's work. The space was divided in three parts. In the first one, there were canvas where the sea was depicted. In the second, there were paintings impicturing the sea and the sky. This was a transition area. Indeed, in the last room, there were canvas on which the sky was painted, without the sea.

Unfortunately, it was only a plan and it was not made in real life... But it was a new way to discover Magritte's work.

Today, my relationship with the artist is not over ! Indeed, in March, I will start a new internship... at the educational department of Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium : EDUCATEAM. How great it is ! I will work at the « Fin de siècle museum » and also at Magritte's ! There, I will take visitors on guided tours. I am sure this will be a very good experience !

René Magritte House Museum, Esseghem street, Brussels

Picture : Magritte's house.

Another place you have to visit if you want to know more about this famous artist is the René Magritte House Museum. It is a museum located in the house where the painter lived for 24 years. I visited this place five years ago. I do not remember everything but, during the visit, I learnt that the artist was inspired by his house. For instance, he painted a lot of red curtains. Actually, he had red curtain in his house. He did the same with his windows and his fireplace.
Moreover, it is very pleasant to enter the place where a person you admire lived. It is a kind of spiritual feeling.

If you want to learn more about it, just go ! You can also visit the web site, just here .  

Magritte museum, Place Royale, Brussels

If you were not at MoMA to see Magritte's work, don't worry, you can go to Brussels !

I visited the Magritte Museum few months ago. For everyone who loves this artist, it is a very extraordinary expérience. The Magritte Museum is one of the Royals Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in Brussels. It is located at the Place Royale.

First, you enter in a very beautiful hall. Then, you have to find the Magritte Museum. You go downstairs, you arrive in another hall with pictures of the artist and of his paintings. You show your ticket to the receptionist, pass the revolving door, get in the lift and you arrive at the third floor. Now, you can start the visit.

ऀThe tour of the Museum shows us Magritte’s work in a chronological way. It is very intersting to understand the progression of his art. The scenography highlights the paintings. On the third floor and on the second, the walls are black and the light is low. On the second floor, you can find drawings which explain the relation that Magritte established between pictures and words. Even if it was difficult to understand, it interested me a lot ! On the first floor, walls are night blue.To me, it refers to the dream world we can find in Magritte’s paintings, although the artist says he is not a dreamer.

ऀThe visit of this museum was really awesome. I have been close to the paintings and appreciated the talent of Magritte. The very precise way he paints is fascinating. Moreover, the atmosphere of the Museum is comfortable, you feel like you are walking in an imaginary world. Unfortunately, the most famous painting, This is not a pipe, is not exhibited is this museum. Furthermore, it was prohibited to take pictures. That is why I cannot show you the inside of the exhibition.

If you feel like discovering this marvelous place, I give you here practical informations :
Standart rate : 8€, reduced rate : 6€, greatly reduced rate : 2€.

You need more informations ? I invite you to visit the web site there.

You can find every information you want about the museum, the collection and the exhibitions. There is also an introduction of Magritte and some explanations about surrealism. If you want to plan your visit, documents are available for every kind of public  and every practical informations you need are written.
Moreover, there is an on-line research center which is very interesting to find documents about Magritte. 

Magritte : The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938.

September 28, 2013 - January 12, 2014, MoMA

Few months ago, at The Museum of Modern Art, there was an exhibition of Magritte's work. For those who were not lucky enough to go there, here is an interview of Anne Umland, the curator.

"To Look at a Magritte painting and then to turn away again and look at the world around you was to find that the world had been ordered and there were no longer any ordinary things.

This is the first major exhibition of Magritte's work to be held in New York city in over  a generation. And it is the very first ever that focuses exclusivly on his break through surrealist years.

His images of bowler hatted men or pipes either not pipes or sky filled blue eyes have been so ubiquitously appropriated by the advertising industry that Magritte's name has been left behind, in some cases.

One of the most famous of the pictures in the show from 1929 is called the Treachery of images, « Ceci n'est pas une pipe ». And I think, for me, that it is at the heart of Magritte's unique ability to remind us that a picture of something is not the same as the thing itself because at the way he juxtaposes frames, puts strange things together he makes these clear images unclear, in terms of what their meaning is, and manages to make that ordinary strange. More often, you'll see that there is one picture per wall, because I thought strongly in designing the space... because Magritte's pictures are also clear and graphic and legible and because there is something familiar about them that there is a tendency for people to walk by and say « got it, that's a Magritte »  and then they move on. What is so great about him is that he's really funny, like a lot of the time he is really making these pictures... that's another thing that is just so great about them … they're accessible, they're funny."

Associations

In his work, Magritte associates objects that are not made to be gathered. For example here, shoes and feet.

Picture : The red Model, 1937

On this picture, a body of a woman becomes a face.

The rape, 1935

Les vacances d’Hegel

Picture : Les vacances d'Hegel, 1958

http://histoireetcivilisation.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/les-vacances-de-hegel.jpg

Here is a glass on an umbrella. Strange, isn’t it ? Indeed, this picture depicts two objects that have opposit functions. A glass is made to contain water whereas an umbrella is made to reject it and to protect yourself from it. This creates trouble in the watcher’s mind. 

The collective invention

Picture : The collective invention, 1934
 http://www.collage.ro/2011/01/rene-magritte/1935-magritte-linvention-collective-73x116-cm/ 

The artist painted it in 1934, one year after the rise to power of Hitler. This is a reversed mermaid which stands for the fear feeling of the artist.
This canvas annouces the fascist conflict the surrealist artists had warned against.

In 1953, this chimera is depitcted again. Maybe this is a metaphor of relationships caused by the cold war : frozen, dead, bitter. The artist expresses his desillusion in regard to his humanist ideas. 

The veil

Picture : The invention of life. 1928
http://uploads4.wikipaintings.org/images/rene-magritte/the-invention-of-life-1928(1).jpg

The veil is a very important element. It half hides objects or charcaters. Magritte often depicts it because of the dead body of his mother, found in the Sambre with her nightdress over her face. The suicide of his mother is a kind of taboo. René, who was 14 when the event happened, never talks about that, but it alludes to it in his art. Here is an example of the way art can be a manner to express oneself and to help to overcome a trauma. 

The treason of images

Picture : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b9/MagrittePipe.jpg/300px-MagrittePipe.jpg

The pipe is the distinguishing feature of Magritte’s work. This élément appeared in Paris, in 1928. The first one was very realistically painted. The legend tells the watcher that « this is not a pipe » but the representation of a pipe. Indeed, we don’t see a real pipe. The object is only depicted and it is wrong to say that this is a pipe. I feel really interested in this reflection : The artist shows us that, in the world of pictures in which we live, we sometimes don’t know what is real and what is not. Pictures are lying to us ! Maybe he developed this idea because he worked as an adman. 

Magritte clarifies his idea with the pipe, but it is the same for other paintings. For example, we can touch and embrace the canva of of woman, but t is very different from holding a real woman. 

Furthermore, this makes me think that when you see the depiction of an artwork, you don’t feel the same emotion than when you are in front of the original one. 

Moreover, this though is still valid nowadays, with the continual development of the importance of the image. To go further, we could say that people are not always what they seem to be.  As I told in the introduction, I really like René Magritte’s work because it gives us food for thought. 

Le libérateur

Picture : http://uploads5.wikipaintings.org/images/rene-magritte/the-liberator-1947(1).jpg

In 1947, he paints Le libérateur, a surrealist character, holding a strange object made with pearls surrounding a picture of an eye. It looks like a man without a face who is holding all the ingredients of a real Magritte’s painting : a bird, a pipe, a key, a glass, a walking stick, a hat. He is sitting on a rock. Behind him, the sky and clouds, an element we also often meet in Magritte’s work. 

This painting is also a political work. The red cloak makes us think about the red flag symbolizing the revolution, freedom and equality. Indeed, René Magritte was a member of the Belgian communist party at this moment. But we can also draw a parallele between this cape and the red curtain very often present in René’s paintings. 

Moreover, this painting is also a self-portrait.

René's life

Réné Magritte was born in 1898 in Belgium. As he was  fourteen, his mother commited a suicide : she drowned in the Sambre. When her body was found, her nightdress was covering her face. This picture left its mark on René Magritte. Indeed, he painted it quite often. 

In 1917, he went to Brussels to study painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Then, he met Georgette Berger and married her in 1922. His first works were made for advertising, and his first canvas were cubist. We have to notice that Magritte’s work was very influenced by De Chirico’s one. From 1927 to 1930, he met surrealist artists in Paris such as André Breton, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard. René Magritte, who is seen as a provincial is hardly accepted by the Parisian artists. He went back to Brusels in 1931, as the leader of surrealist painting in Belgium. There, he opened an advertising workshop. 

He died in 1967, in Brussels.