Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

Rene Magritte was twelve years old when his mother, Regina, committed suicide by drowning herself into the Sambre River. According to a nurse, the little boy was present when his mother's body was retrieved from the river, though her face had been covered. Of what little is known about Magritte's early life, this tragic story stands out eerily. Magritte went on to puzzle many art critics by painting numerous figures with their faces obscured by objects--or covered. He also painted numerous landscapes of the Sambre River.



L'invention de la vie by Rene Magritte, 1928

Magritte's earliest works, dating back to 1915, were reminiscent of Impressionist artists'. He probably honed these skills at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where he studied until 1919, finding it suffocating and uninspiring. Magritte's paintings after his departure show him going against everything he had been taught, he dabbled in cubism, futurism, and oddly manipulated female nudes.
In 1922, twenty-four year old Magritte married Georgette Berger, who was a childhood friend, as well as a former Academie classmate. Like Magritte, Georgette enjoyed the unexplored territories of art.

From 1922 to 1923, Magritte designed wallpapers for a company, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when he began to pursue painting full time. This didn't work out too well, at first. It seemed the critics just weren't ready for surrealism. Depressed, Magritte returned with Georgette to Brussels in 1930 and resumed his work in advertising.

Beautiful newlyweds Rene and Georgette Magritte

Convinced that Magritte had something special, fellow surrealist Edward James allowed he and Georgette to rent his London apartment and featured two of Magritte's pieces, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite (Not to be Reproduced). Magritte finally began to receive the recognition he deserved. World War I had hardened the public, but it had also opened their minds to new possibilities in art, literature, and fashion. Just like Ernest Hemingway's to-the-point prose and Coco Chanel's high quality but spare dresses, Magritte's art captured the "scarred but smarter" attitude felt around the globe.



Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle)


La Reproduction Interdite (Not to be Reproduced)

During the German occupation, Magritte stayed in Brussels. Throughout his career, Magritte had expressed his deepest emotions through painting. His works during the German occupation used violent, bright, bold, patterns, a rebellion to the isolation and alienation he felt in German occupied Belgium. However, after the war, he turned his back on this "savage" style, wanting to "lighten up" surrealism.


Magritte's art was exhibited in the United States first in 1936, and then after his death at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1965 and 1992. Artists all around the world became exposed to, and fell in love with, Magritte's way of thinking, ushering in a new age of surrealists, who used metals, recycleables, clay, and other unorthodox items to create art. As the pop art age of the 1960s took hold, Magritte's art inspired British and American teens who wanted to think outside the box of their society.













"The Treachery of Images" by Rene Magritte 1929

How was your subject influenced by a particular cultural movement?

After he dropped out of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, Magritte vented his resentment of the old-fashioned ideals being forced upon him by experimenting with radical new techniques. Magritte soon found out that there were other artists who felt the same way he did. They were called surrealists, and they didn't play by anyone else's rules. Surrealists bent the classic idea of art, manipulating seemingly simple scenes into thought provoking, sometimes almost dream-like images. As Magritte became acquainted with more and more of these revolutionary thinkers, his style of painting matured and blossomed into surrealism.

What are some major themes that your subject addresses?

Magritte was loved for the quirky, hidden meanings within his work. He wanted the viewer to form their own idea of what the image they were seeing meant. If they have an idea that contradicts the norm, the should embrace it, not bury it under traditional thinking, as Magritte had been taught to at the Academie. With the Great Depression taking it's toll on the world's economy, people were sick and tired of looking at the same bright, romanticized scenes painted just for the sake of being pretty. Magritte's art was the surreal of the surreal. It bent the typical rules of art, leaving the viewer asking questions; "What am I really seeing?" and "What else could this image mean?"

Links to Magritte's work:

http://www.magritte-gallery.com/



Lizzie J.