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.