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Surrealism is a 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
Surrealism is a term that refers to a heightened sense of reality; translated from French, the term means overrealism--a vision of reality that supercedes the mundane

Rene Magritte (pronounced: rna mägrt, 1898-1967)
"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."René Magritte

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Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter. He painted in a realistic style.
While the objects appear to the viewer to be recognizable, the composition of those recognizable objects appear fantastic. His paintings are expressive for their juxtaposition of common objects, often altered in scale, and placed in absurd settings. Magritte is deeply interested in the process of thought, and his paintings tend to raise the awareness of the viewer to their own thought processes.
Rene Magritte

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More often than not, Magritte chose ordinary things from which to construct his works trees, chairs, tables, doors, windows, shoes, shelves, landscapes, people. He wanted to be understood via these ordinary things, but he also wanted to shock and surprise his viewers.
Rene Magritte

Surrealistic Techniques
“How to make the ordinary look extraordinary”
• Scale
• Levitation
• Juxtaposition
• Dislocation
• Transparency
• Transformation

Changing an object’s scale, or relative size.

SCALE

SCALE
Personal Values

Floating objects that don’t normally float

LEVITATION

LEVITATION
Golconde

Joining two images together in impossible combinations

JUXTAPOSITION

JUXTAPOSITION

Taking an object form its usual environment and placing it in an unfamiliar one

DISLOCATION

DISLOCATION

Making objects transparent that are not usually transparent

TRANSPARENCY

TRANSPARENCY

TRANSPARENCY

TRANSPARENCY

Changing objects in unusual way

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION

TRANSFORMATION