He made ordinary objects surreal

His name is Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte, one of the most famous surrealism artists has caught my attention recently. Surrealists at the time liked to portray abnormal beings or objects in unusual environments. Magritte, however, challenged our senses by portraying very ordinary objects in strange ways, making us reimagine our perception of the world around us.

I'll be showcasing some of his work I enjoyed and attempt to provide some interpretation. Starting off with the piece that inspired me to write this post and one that does not seem very strange....atleast at face value.

1. The Treachary Of Images, 1929

This piece plays with our gap between language and meaning. The difference between representation and reality. Looking at this, your first thought undoubtedly was "that's a pipe". You then glance down and read the statement:

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

This is not a pipe.

You face a contradiction. Looking back at it you think "ok, its not a pipe, its an image of a pipe". Precisely. It is merely a representation of a pipe using oil painting over a canvas. You might think this is silly which I found to be a common thought with Magritte's work however this quickly changes once you give it a little more thought.

This painting challenges the direct chain of thought we have between words and images. He encourages us to do some alternative thinking. Obviously no one thinks it is an actual pipe however the way our brains jump to the abstract object in the image (pipe) and not the concrete (painting) is pretty interesting.

2. Not to be reproduced, 1937

Here we see a man clearly standing infront of a mirror. What we expect is to see the man's reflection facing towards the observer but that doesn't happen. We are left with the reflection (or more of a reproduction) of his back and this wonder. What does the man look like? What kind of mirror is this? Magritte always tried to evoke the viewer's feelings, getting them to desire something they cannot have by concealing certain areas of the subject (we will see more of this).

Perhaps what makes it more bizarre is the seemingly correct reflection of the book and the lighting on the shelf. I think this reinstates the intention to conceal the front of the man and to further confuse us.

Given that this was a portrait for an Edward James, some say Magritte painted Edward from Magritte's perspective and then painted Edward looking at Magritte's painting of him thus the replication.

3. The Empire of Lights, 1940-1960

The Empire of Lights was a series of paintings all of a similar scene. At the bottom you find a street lamp illuminating a dark street at night with most windows closed off assuming people are going to sleep. However, at the top you're met with a bright blue afternoon sky and thats what makes it surreal.

Those two scenes on their own would've made for pretty mundane paintings but the combination of the two is what makes this painting so unsettling and thought provoking. This is what Magritte had to say about it:

"What is represented in a picture is what is visible to the eye, it is the thing or the things that had to be thought of. Thus. what is represented in the picture are the things I thought of, to be precise, a nocturnal landscape and a skyscape such as can be seen in broad daylight. The landscape suggests night and the skyscape day. This evocation of night and day seems to me to have the power to surprise and delight us. I call this power: poetry. "

4. The Son of Man

This might be Magritte's most famous and recognizable painting. Said to be a self portrait, you see a man standing dressed in formal attire with a bowler hat. But just like any Magritte painting, there is something very strange you notice right away. The apple. The man's face is hidden by a floating apple.

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well… There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”

As we saw earlier, Magritte enjoys to play with the idea of us wanting to see what is hidden. He calls it the conflict between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present. Something that isn't invisible as it needs to be visible for us to care about it but it's not completely visible either. The man's face is the visible that is hidden and that's what creates the desire. But, more interestingly, what's behind the apple? Is it a face? It is not a face. Just like this is not a pipe. This is not a face. It is not even a painting of a face, it is blank canvas. The face isn't hidden, there is no face at all and yet our brain still believes there's something hidden.

5. False Mirror, 1929

What does it feel like to be the observer and the observed? We see an iris with the reflection of a blue sky filled with clouds. Is the eye looking at us or at the sky? Is the eye even looking at anything or is the sky seen through an opening in the iris?

Some talk about the contrast between the dead black of the pupil and the colourful sky in the iris and how that could describe how a prisoner of war might look at a day where he's set free (the painting was completed during the first World War).

6. Collective Invention, 1934

If I tell you to imagine a painting of a mermaid sitting at shore. Would it be strange at all? I don't think so. Now what if we reverse the halves that form a mermaid, why does this make it so strange? Magritte took this idea and created Collective Invention. Another instance of taking something very familiar and making them very serene.

Conclusion

Magritte has so many other works, all extremely thought-provoking and equally as strange. I'll leave you with a quote.

“My painting is visible images which conceal nothing....they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”
- Rene Magritte