René Magritte
Surréalisme
Surréalism
(surrealism)
an art movement that
sought to realize the
creative potential of the
unconsious mind
sur
réalisme
on (top of)
actuality
Sa Vie
• Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist.
• He was born (né) in Belgium on November
21, 1898.
• His mother drowned when he was thirteen
years old. She may have committed suicide.
Some people say that it affected his
surrealist style of painting.
• He sold his first surrealist painting “le Jockey
perdu” in 1927.
• He experimented with several different styles of
surrealism throughout the next 40 years.
Les études
• Magritte studied at les Beaux-Arts de
Bruxelles (the university of fine arts in
Brussels).
• From 1927-1930, he lived in the suburbs of
Paris (la banlieue parisienne).
• He died on August 15th, 1969
Son Art:
le but de Magritte
• To make people think about reality –
what does it mean? Does it have to
mean anything?
• He wants people to become
hypersensitive to what surrounds
them.
How does he reach his goal?
• He places ordinary
objects in unusual
situations or in an
unusual context.
(Consider the lion and
the man/angel on the
bridge in Homesickness.)
• It makes the observer
think “outside the box,”
ponder, or consider
what is really “real.”
Is it really a pipe?
• Magritte wished to demonstrate that words do
not necessarily portray the true meaning of an
object.
(this is not a pipe)
• The pipe in the painting is very realistic looking
but, indeed, it is not a pipe. One can not use it for
smoking tobacco.
Juxtaposition
• Magritte plays with our
sense of perspective when
he places objects together
that do not fit
proportionately.
• Such positioning of objects
can be fun to look at, or they
can be bothersome to the eye.
•When people would ask
Magritte what was his
purpose or message for a
particular work, his answers
were usually quite vague.
•A typical response might be
something like: “It’s for you
to figure it out.”
Le
Thérapeute
Château
des Pyrénées
Les Amants (1928)