The Museum of Modern Art

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On December 7, 2013, the MOMA museum exhibited The Mystery of the ordinary (1926-1938), famous art works of Rene Magritte. Magritte, Belgium’s only surrealist painter describes his works as “de-familiarizing the familiar”, taking everyday situations and tweaking them with a contrasting object. As soon as you step into the exhibit there is a 59 1/4" x 6’ 4 7/8" (150.4 x 195.2 cm) painting on a canvas. In oil paint, Magritte expresses what looks like a violent murder, as a naked dead woman disturbing the interior peace of a room. This sets a contradictory mood for the viewer as they continue observing each art work within the gallery. Walking through the exhibit you pass all sorts of people; from different backgrounds to different age groups, all unifying in conversation trying to interpret and comprehend the art. “I felt that the world. That life could be transformed and made more in keeping with thought and feeling”-Magritte.
“There exists a secret affinity between certain objects.”- The Secret Life of Objects. This two dimensional, 21 1/4 x 25 9/16" (54 x 65 cm) canvas, hangs in the wall of the exhibit. It was the most exquisite art work by Magritte. The artist takes a regular egg sitting on a table and gives it life in his painting. As if seeing the future, he paints the egg not as it is but as what it will become. In the painting is Magritte himself looking at the egg with this intensity trying to grasp
Rodriguez 2 every detail as if he were painting nothing more than what it is, however when you observe what he is tr...

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...e different art pieces throughout the gallery I felt a little overwhelmed because there were so many, and most of them were not easy to understand. The art works that had what appeared to be random and unrelated to the paintings bothered me because even though I spent time looking at them in different perspectives and reading the blurb about them I couldn’t understand them; for example the “Omnipotence of the dream”. Other than that I felt that I was constantly walking into different situations as I stared at different pieces. Like if I was present in each event, I think it had to do a lot with the size of the canvases and the light and shadow aspects that played a huge role in making the paintings look more realistic. To me personally I felt that Magritte was presenting the different life he can give each object to control the way the viewer perceives the painting.

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