Rene Magritte Research Paper

Patricia Jaurigue
Arth 132
Meyer
Tue/Thurs 11am
Magritte’s Surrealist Style

Rene Magritte was one of the most well-known surrealist painters of all time. It was not until he reached his 50s that he finally grasped fame and recognition for his artwork. Magritte was considered the most influential artist of surrealist art and pop art movement, the work he manifested, and his distinct styles. Much of Magritte's work incorporated normal objects, he would arrange the figures, and locations, which forced the viewer to look deeper into the art and at what was represented.
Magritte was born in 1898 his father was wealthy, and his mother eventually took her life years later. These events in Magritte's life led him to study art. In Magritte's earlier years, many of his admirers compared his style to that of

Pablo Picasso following the Cubo-Futurist art form. In 1922, he married and had numerous of small jobs to get by. Shortly after being married he would spend his free time creating art during this period, is when he realized he enjoyed surrealism.
Over time Magritte became depressed by the failure that he faced, which led him to move and join a surrealist group. During this time between 1927-1930 "the work Magritte created was described as cavernous, with many of his paintings showcasing bizarre scenes, with a hint of eroticism".1 Rene Magritte eventually adopted a colorful, painterly as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment. During his career, he followed the surrealist style and rarely drifted away from it. Much of the work Magritte made had similar reoccurring themes. Some of Magritte's favorite to manipulate were things such as floating rocks, and being able to create a painting within a painting, he also used many inanimate objects, within a human figure, creating the distinct styles which other artists did not.
During the course of his career, Magritte would borrow famous paintings by other artist and would put his surreal twist to it. One of these famous works was The Balcony, which is his rendition of Edouard Manet famous masterpiece, in this piece he replaced the figures that were in the image, with coffins. Doing this allowed Magritte to showcase his style, and to create a design, that forced viewers to look at his piece outside the norm and focus on the distinctive features. His choice of coffins comes across to me as disturbing yet it's poetic in a sense. I find it intriguing how just a simple change to an image can give a whole new meaning. It seems as if it becomes a cloud of sadness over the image, replacing human figures with coffins brings out real emotion the Magritte may have been feeling. Rene Magritte seems to enjoy going outside the box and questioning western perception.
Magritte stayed true to his surrealist style; he began to work on sculptures later on in his career in which he took on a playful sense of humor, which became an essential element in his career. One example of this is the series of pipe paintings that he created. He had some paradox idea but could not without seeing the series together.
Magritte began to combine words and images in a number of his paintings. These word-pictures did not correspond to the illustration or an idea. An example of this is The Interpretation of Dreams, if you look at this piece you can see that none of the words match the pictures except for one. According to Catherine Belsey's Book entitled Post-structuralism "Magritte's word-paintings wittily exploit the arbitrariness of the relationship between the signifier and the meaning".2 When we grow up we are used to seeing images put together with the correct wording, although Magritte does the opposite and only labels on correctly as if the language doesn't matter.
Magritte shared the Surrealist concept of the eroticism and even power. He involved metamorphosis in his work. For example, in this painting entitled Black Magic, the woman is depicted naked and is leaning on a rock that slowly transitions into the blue sky. The woman described is a representation of Magritte's wife. She's painted in a classical manner and the way the proportions are exact she resembles a marble statute. Nude statues always show the figure facing away from the viewer or with their eyes closed, in which gives the feeling of eroticism. Another Example is his piece entitled The Rape, this particular painting depicts a head with a human body as the face. This painting is a representation of his mother who committed suicide when he was younger, and all he seen was her naked body. We cannot see the face because when her body was discovered it was covered with her clothing, which his painting shows an actual image of that day. The women's faced was replaced with a naked torso. According to our text book History of Modern Art “The image raises the specter of another sort of sexual violence, the unconscious fear of castration, signaled by the fusion of mouth… a common surrealist symbol of psychic threat posed by women.” 4 This painting is very powerful, as if he wanted the audience to feel his emotion the way he felt.
In 1940, Magritte was faced with obstacles in his life one being his financial situation and another feeling failure with his paintings.

At this point, he decided to I guess you can say fight his anxiety and be happy from that point on. Rene Magritte decided it was time to change up his style and began to paint what he called leaf-birds, which exotic birds became the dominant motif. One of these works was entitled Le Rendez-Vous, in which each bird is painted colorfully and distinctively. Magritte challenges us as the audience and our expectations or reality by his distortions of scale as well as his perspective. "These subversions, so emblematic of Magritte's thought-provoking and witty approach, are further emphasized through distinct oppositions of color, lighting, depicted movement and, even mood".3 Magritte style was unorthodox and kept everyone wondering the true meaning of his art. Magritte once said, "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."5
Magritte had the ability to depict his figures suggestively, yet make it questionable, which made his work just that more desirable. Although Magritte died is work is still on display throughout the world. Rene Magritte is widely known for introducing his style to the surrealist world, he brought a new outlook on art through his paintings and his sculptures during the course of his career.