Rene Magritte works with titles. Rene Magritte

Bella Adtseeva

The Belgian artist Rene Magritte, despite his undoubted affiliation with surrealism, always stood apart in the movement. Firstly, he was skeptical about perhaps the main hobby of the entire group of Andre Breton - Freud's psychoanalysis. Secondly, Magritte’s paintings themselves are not similar to either the crazy plots of Salvador Dali or the bizarre landscapes of Max Ernst. Magritte used mostly ordinary everyday images - trees, windows, doors, fruits, human figures - but his paintings are no less absurd and mysterious than the works of his eccentric colleagues. Without creating fantastic objects and creatures from the depths of the subconscious, the Belgian artist did what Lautreamont called art - he arranged “a meeting of an umbrella and a typewriter on the operating table,” combining banal things in an unusual way. Art critics and connoisseurs still offer new interpretations of his paintings and their poetic titles, almost never related to the image, which once again confirms: Magritte’s simplicity is deceptive.

Rene Magritte himself called his art not even surrealism, but magical realism, and was very distrustful of any attempts at interpretation, and even more so the search for symbols, arguing that the only thing to do with paintings is to look at them.

From that moment on, Magritte periodically returned to the image of a mysterious stranger in a bowler hat, depicting him either on the sandy seashore, or on a city bridge, or in a green forest, or facing a mountain landscape. There could be two or three strangers, they stood with their backs to the viewer or semi-sideways, and sometimes - as, for example, in the painting High Society (1962) (can be translated as "High Society" - editor's note) - the artist indicated only an outline men in a bowler hat, filling it with clouds and leaves. The most famous paintings depicting a stranger are “Golconda” (1953) and, of course, “Son of Man” (1964) - Magritte’s most widely replicated work, parodies and allusions to which are found so often that the image already lives separately from its creator. Initially, Rene Magritte painted the picture as a self-portrait, where the figure of a man symbolized a modern man who has lost his individuality, but remains the son of Adam, who is unable to resist temptations - hence the apple covering his face.

"Lovers"

Rene Magritte quite often commented on his paintings, but left one of the most mysterious - “Lovers” (1928) without explanation, leaving room for interpretation to art critics and fans. The first ones again saw in the painting a reference to the artist’s childhood and experiences associated with her mother’s suicide (when her body was taken out of the river, the woman’s head was covered with the hem of her nightgown - editor’s note). The simplest and most obvious of the existing versions - “love is blind” - does not inspire confidence among experts, who often interpret the picture as an attempt to convey isolation between people who are unable to overcome alienation even in moments of passion. Others see here the impossibility of understanding and getting to know close people to the end, while others understand “Lovers” as a realized metaphor for “losing one’s head from love.”

In the same year, Rene Magritte painted a second painting called “Lovers” - in it the faces of the man and woman are also closed, but their poses and background have changed, and the general mood has changed from tense to peaceful.

Be that as it may, “The Lovers” remains one of Magritte’s most recognizable paintings, the mysterious atmosphere of which is borrowed by today’s artists - for example, the cover of the debut album of the British group Funeral for a Friend Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation (2003) refers to it.

"The Treachery of Images", or This Is Not...

The names of Rene Magritte's paintings and their connection with the image are a topic for separate study. “The Glass Key”, “Achieving the Impossible”, “Human Destiny”, “The Obstacle of Emptiness”, “The Beautiful World”, “Empire of Light” - poetic and mysterious, they almost never describe what the viewer sees on the canvas, but about What meaning the artist wanted to put into the name, in each individual case one can only guess. “The titles are chosen in such a way that they do not allow my paintings to be placed in the realm of the familiar, where the automaticity of thought will certainly work to prevent anxiety,” Magritte explained.

In 1948, he created the painting “The Treachery of Images,” which became one of Magritte’s most famous works thanks to the inscription on it: from inconsistency the artist came to denial, writing “This is not a pipe” under the image of a pipe. "This famous pipe. How people reproached me with it! And yet, you can fill it with tobacco? No, it's just a picture, isn't it? So if I wrote under the picture, 'This is a pipe,' I'd be lying !" - said the artist.

Magritte's Sky

The sky with clouds floating across it is such an everyday and used image that it seems impossible to make it the “calling card” of any particular artist. However, Magritte’s sky cannot be confused with someone else’s - more often than not due to the fact that in his paintings it is reflected in fancy mirrors and huge eyes, fills the contours of birds and, together with the horizon line, imperceptibly passes from the landscape onto the easel (series “Human Destiny” "). The serene sky serves as a background for a stranger in a bowler hat (Decalcomania, 1966), replaces the gray walls of the room (Personal Values, 1952) and is refracted in three-dimensional mirrors (Elementary Cosmogony, 1949).

The famous "Empire of Light" (1954), it would seem, is not at all similar to the works of Magritte - in the evening landscape, at first glance, there was no place for unusual objects and mysterious combinations. And yet such a combination exists, and it makes the picture “Magritte” - a clear daytime sky over a lake and a house immersed in darkness.

18.07.2017 Oksana Kopenkina

Rene Magritte. Clairvoyance (self-portrait). 54 x 64.9 cm. 1936. Private collection. Artchive.ru

There is not a drop of posing in the art of Rene Magritte. He does not “interest” the viewer with the help of his mysterious paintings. Instead, he urges thinking.

A painting that is pleasing to the eye is not art for Magritte. She is completely empty for him.

Today, encyclopedias identify Magritte as an outstanding surrealist. The master probably wouldn't like it. He eschewed psychoanalysis and disliked Freud.

Having once severed creative ties with Andre Bretton (theorist of surrealism), he forbade ever calling himself a surrealist.

He became the pioneer of magical realism. Magritte was generally a free artist, not ready to give up his freedom in the name of recognition. Therefore, he wrote only what mattered to him.

Starting point controversy

Rene was born on November 21, 1898 in the city of Lessines (Belgium). A short time later, three more brothers were born.

A happy childhood ended for the future artist at the age of 14. In 1912, his mother drowned herself in the river. Seeing how the townspeople pulled out the lifeless body of his mother, young Rene tried to understand the reason for what happened. He always believed in the power of thought. You just need to try very hard, and then the mind will find the answers.

Today, art historians argue about the influence of childhood tragedy on the painter. Some believe that it was under the auspices of this drama that a series of paintings depicting mermaids appeared. True, Magritte’s mermaids are the opposite: with a fish top and a human bottom.

Rene Magritte. Collective invention. 1934 Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia, Düsseldorf. Wikiart.org

Others, without denying the influence of this dark page of biography, are still inclined to see the nature of talent in the very personality of the artist.

R. Magritte. Portrait. 1935 MOMA, New York

He was a real dreamer. He came up with unprecedented games and entertainment. But Rene's romantic mindset was alien to his brothers. They never managed to become family.

Who knows, maybe this is a portrait of one of his brothers. Which reflects the cool relationship between people related by blood.

Do you see the eye in the bacon? I think you have to dislike a person, to put it mildly, in order to paint such a portrait of him.

Lifelong love

But his wife, Georgette Berger, became a truly close person to him. They met as teenagers. And having met by chance in the botanical garden as adults, they never parted again.

Georgette was his muse and best friend. Magritte dedicated more than one of his paintings to her, and she dedicated her entire life to him.

Only one story darkened their family life. After 13 years of marriage, Magritte became interested in another woman. Georgette took revenge on him by having an affair with his friend. They lived apart for 5 years.

For some reason, it was during this period that Magritte painted this portrait of Georgette.

Rene Magritte. Georgette. 1937 Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels. Wikiart.org

This portrait especially looks like a postcard. Such openness is characteristic of almost all of Magritte’s paintings.

In 1940, the couple reunited again. And they never parted.

After the death of her husband, Georgette recalled that to this day, looking at his paintings, she talks to him and often argues.

Magritte did not want to embody his love as some kind of cliché. In an effort to get to the essence of this feeling, he creates the canvas “Lovers”. In it, the faces of young people are wrapped in sheets.

Rene Magritte. Lovers. 54 x 73.4 cm. 1928. Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York. Renemagritte.org

This work is striking in its anonymity. We don't see the characters' faces. Such impersonality was characteristic of almost all of the artist’s works.

Even if there was no veil on the faces, the facial features were blocked by an ordinary object. For example, an apple.

Rene Magritte. Son of man. 116 x 89 cm. 1964. Private collection. Artchive.ru

Recognition and civic duty

In 1918, the young man graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Having left the threshold of the “alma mater”, he began to painfully search for a means of subsistence.

He could not go against his idea, adapting to the tastes of the public. Therefore, I got a job in a wallpaper painting workshop.

It’s hard to imagine a sadder contradiction: the artist, who most of all tried to capture a thought, was forced to paint flowers on the wallpaper.

But Rene continued to write in his free time. The heroes of his paintings are ordinary objects. Or rather, the ideas hidden behind them.

There is a series of paintings of denial, where the artist deliberately draws, for example, a pipe and leaves the signature: “This is not a pipe.” Thus drawing attention to what is behind the usual shell of the object.

Rene Magritte. The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe). 63.5 x 93.9 cm. 1948. Private collection. Wikiart.org.

Each painting by Magritte is a witty independent story. The components of the canvas do not spread or deform. They are realistic and recognizable.

But in the compositional totality they form some completely new thought. The master claimed that each of his paintings had a special meaning “wired” into it. No pointless clutter.

What, for example, is the point of a rain of people? The artist himself never deciphered his paintings. Everyone is looking for hidden subtext for themselves.

Rene Magritte. Golconda. 100 x 81 cm. 1953. Private collection, Houston. Artchive.ru

In 1927, Rene's first exhibition opened, which was not a critical success. And the Magrittes couple leaves for Paris, the capital of avant-garde art.

After a short collaboration with the Bretton circle, the artist chooses his own path and quickly achieves success.

Contemporaries recall that Rene was different from all artists. He never had his own workshop. And in the house where Magritte lived, there was no disorder characteristic of the painter. Magritte said that paint was created to be applied to canvas, and not to be smeared on the floor.

However, his paintings were just as “clean” and even a bit dry. Clear lines, perfect shapes. Extreme realism turning into illusion.

Rene Magritte. Conditions of human existence. 1934. Private collection. Artchive.ru

With the onset of the war, Magritte began to paint paintings that were not typical of his style. Art critics will call this time the “” period.

Rene believed that it was his civic duty to paint life-affirming images, giving the viewer hope. The dove of peace with a tail of flowers is a striking example of Magritte’s “military” art.

Rene Magritte. A favorable sign. 1944. Private collection. Wikiart.org

Achieved immortality

After the war, Magritte returned to his usual style, thinking a lot about the topic of death and life.

Suffice it to recall his parodies of famous paintings by other artists, where he replaced all the heroes with coffins. This is how the painting “Balcony” looks like in Magritte’s interpretation.

Rene Magritte. Perspective II: Manet's Balcony. 80 x 60 cm. 1950. Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent. Artchive.ru

Magritte recognizes the greatness of death before thought. These people, real people who once posed for Edouard Manet, are no longer alive. And all their thoughts disappeared forever.

But did Magritte manage to cheat death? His wife Georgette claimed yes! He is alive in his paintings, in the riddles-rebuses that each carries within itself. And calling on the viewer to find their answer.

After the artist’s death from pancreatic cancer in 1967, Georgette until the end of her days kept untouched everything that belonged to her talented husband - brushes, palette, paints. And on the easel there was still an unfinished painting “Empire of Light”.

Rene Magritte. Empire of Light. 146 x 114 cm. 1950s. Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

For those who do not want to miss the most interesting things about artists and paintings. Leave your e-mail (in the form below the text), and you will be the first to know about new articles on my blog.

In contact with

René Magritte is a Belgian surrealist artist. Known as the author of witty and at the same time poetically mysterious paintings.

Biography of Rene Magritte

Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 in the small Belgian town of Lessines. He spent his childhood and youth in the small industrial city of Charleroi. Life was hard.

In 1912, his mother drowned herself in the Sambre River, which apparently had a great influence on the future artist, who was then still a teenager; however, contrary to popular belief, the influence of this event on the author’s work should not be overestimated. Magritte brought back from his childhood a number of other, not so tragic, but no less mysterious memories, about which he himself said that they were reflected in his work (lecture of 1938).

Magritte studied for two years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, which he left in 1918. During this time he met Georgette Berger, whom he married in 1922 and with whom he lived until his death in 1967.

In 1926, Magritte created the surreal painting “The Lost Jockey,” which he considered his first successful painting of this kind. In 1927 he organized his first exhibition. Critics recognize it as unsuccessful, and Magritte and Georgette leave for Paris, where they meet Andre Breton and join his surrealist circle. In this circle, Magritte did not lose his individuality, but joining it helped Magritte find that signature, unique style by which his paintings are recognized. The artist was not afraid to argue with other surrealists: for example, Magritte had a negative attitude towards psychoanalysis and especially its manifestations in art. Indeed, the nature of his work is not so much psychological as philosophical and poetic, sometimes based on paradoxes of logic.

From 1932 to 1945, the artist joined the Belgian Communist Party three times and also left its ranks three times.

After terminating the contract with the Sainteau gallery, Magritte returned to Brussels and again worked with advertising, and then, together with his brother, opened an agency that gave them a regular income. During the German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War, Magritte changed the colors and style of his paintings, approaching the style of Renoir: the artist considered it important to cheer people up and instill hope in them.

However, after the war, Magritte stopped painting in such a “sunny” style and returned to the images of his pre-war paintings. By processing and improving them, he finally forms his strange style and achieves wide recognition.

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967, leaving a new version of his perhaps most famous painting, Empire of Light, unfinished. He was buried in Schaerbeek Cemetery.

Artist's creativity

“Surrealism is reality freed from banal meaning,” Magritte once said.

The artist's paintings create a feeling of mysterious tension and fear; this feeling is achieved by depicting a situation that has nothing in common with the normal one familiar to a person. The secret of Magritte's works lies in the contrast between beautifully painted "hyperreal" objects and their strange combinations and unnatural surroundings.

"Surrealism of Magritte" is an intellectual game that reveals the problematic properties of visual perception and illusory images on a plane. The artist called his paintings theorems, believing that the shifts and transformations of reality occurring in them have an internal logic similar to the logic of mathematical transformations. Already a series of works from the late 1920s - early 1930s, where an elementary picture is accompanied by an inscription that contradicts it, demonstrates the symbolic nature of the visual image (“The Empty Mask”, 1928, Düsseldorf, Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia; “Betrayal of Images” ", 1928-1929, Los Angeles, Museum of Art; "The Key to Dreams", 1930, Paris, private collection). In a number of paintings, surrealist absurdity arises as a consequence of the literal translation of verbal metaphors into a visible image (“Lovers”, 1926, Brussels, private collection; “The Art of Conversation”, 1950, private collection).

The artist’s special interest in psychological and epistemological problems was manifested in the play of reflections inherent in his painting, in the comparison of obvious and hidden images, in the symbolism of the mirror, eye, window, stage and curtain, painting within a painting (“Human Lot”, 1933, Washington, National Gallery ; “Unacceptable Reproduction”, 1937, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen; “Euclides Walk”, 1955, Minneapolis, Institute of Arts). In the 1940s, Magritte made two attempts to change his style. However, the so-called “captivity of salts style” (or “Renoir style”, 1945-1947) and the subsequent “vulgar style” (1947-1948) did not lead to fruitful results, and the artist returned to his previous method. In sculpture, Magritte duplicated the images of his painting, continuing to develop the theme of the relationship between physical and mental realities.

Magritte, sometimes arranging optical puzzles, laughs at the audience and makes fun of the naive belief of realists that they accurately reflect the world around them. According to Magritte, no amount of virtuosity of the brush and precision of observation can “catch” a real physical object on the canvas. A painting is a fictional space, which, however, does not deny the fact that the essence of objects and phenomena can be expressed in it much more fully and deeply than with the most high-quality and conscientious copying of reality. Therefore, in the famous self-portrait “Divination,” Magritte programmatically captures his method, which consists in visualizing the invisible, treating painting as witchcraft. There is an egg on the table in front of the artist, and a bird on the canvas on the easel.

He was able to reveal the irrational and mysterious that surrounds us simply and powerfully, fundamentally remaining in line with figurative painting. He forced us to abandon dogma and primitivism in the perception of life, discovering new meanings in seemingly elementary truths.

Magritte despised artists who became prisoners of their talent and virtuosity, hated abilities if they were reduced to techniques and focused on materials. His constant concern was thought in pictures, without any preconceived thoughts, without any concepts - thought exclusively in the visual sphere, which is nevertheless stimulated by the intellect and metaphysics:

“...and with the help of painting I make thoughts visible.”

Acquaintance with the metaphysical painting of George de Chirico and Dadaistic poetry was an important turning point for Magritte's work. In 1925, Magritte joined the Dada group, collaborating in the magazines “Aesophage” and “Marie” together with Jean Arp, Picabia, Tzara and other Dadaists. In 1925–1926, Magritte painted Oasis and The Lost Jockey, his first surrealist paintings. In 1927–1930, Magritte lived in France, participated in the activities of a group of surrealists, and became close friends with Max Ernst, Dali, Andre Breton, Louis Buñuel and especially Paul Eluard.

It is enough just to look closely at his work to feel that the neat and balanced Belgian bourgeois, alien to eccentricity and scandal, was indeed one of the magical artists of this century.

Magritte's strength and power lies in his ability to support not meaning, but the need for meaning in a world that has ceased to recognize this need. His work is a mystery that is unlikely to be fully solved.

Magritte hated humility, patience, the past (equally his own and others), folklore, advertising and advertising voices, boy scouts, drunk people. And arts and crafts. The latter is clear: Magritte spent eight years painting wallpaper, posters, decorations for advertising and other decorative and creative works before he was recognized as an artist.
He lived a surprisingly boring life. Maybe even more boring than Kafka. He didn’t smear his pants with goat excrement, didn’t make a fuss, didn’t go crazy. He loved one woman, painted pictures in the dining room, dressed sparsely. The only bright event in his entire life was the tragic death of his mother. The future artist's mother drowned herself in a river when he was 14 years old. Magritte preferred not to talk about this family tragedy, and even the artist’s wife, who lived with him for almost fifty years, learned about her mother’s suicide only from Magritte’s biographer. However, experts believe that the echo of the terrible death haunted Rene. When the drowned woman's body was found, her face was wrapped in a nightgown. Maybe that's why Magritte so often paints women whose faces are covered with a veil?
Despite his close ties to surrealism, Magritte did not like to be called a surrealist. For his work, he came up with the name “magical realism”, because his works are not so much addressed to the subconscious, but encourage active reflection and the search for answers to eternal questions.
He built the plot of his paintings on a play of contrasts. The most important idea of all the paintings of Rene Magritte is that only the proximity of incompatible things allows you to clearly understand the essence and nature of each of them

Alogism, absurdity, combination of the incongruous, paradoxical visual variability of images and figures - this is the basis of the foundations of surrealism. The founder of this movement is considered to be the embodiment of the theory of the subconscious of Sigmund Freud at the basis of surrealism. It was on this basis that many representatives of the movement created masterpieces that did not reflect objective reality, but were merely the embodiment of individual images inspired by the subconscious. The canvases painted by the surrealists could not be the product of either good or evil. They all evoked different emotions in different people. Therefore, we can say with confidence that this direction of modernism is quite controversial, which contributed to its rapid spread in painting and literature.

Surrealism as an illusion and literature of the 20th century

Salvador Dali, Paul Delvaux, Rene Magritte, Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Yves Tanguy, Michael Parkes and Dorothy Tanning are the pillars of surrealism that emerged in France in the 20s of the last century. This trend is not limited to France, but has spread to other countries and continents. Surrealism greatly facilitated the perception of cubism and abstractionism.

One of the main postulates of the surrealists was the identification of the energy of creators with the human subconscious, which manifests itself in sleep, under hypnosis, in delirium during illness, or in random creative insights.

Distinctive characteristics of surrealism

Surrealism is a complex movement in painting, which many artists understood and understand in their own way. It is therefore not surprising that surrealism developed in two conceptually different directions. The first branch can easily be attributed to Miro, Max Ernst, Jean Arp and Andre Masson, in whose works the main place was occupied by images that smoothly turn into abstraction. The second branch takes as a basis the embodiment of a surreal image generated by the human subconscious, with illusory accuracy. Salvador Dali, who is an ideal representative of academic painting, worked in this direction. It is his works that are characterized by an accurate rendering of chiaroscuro and a careful manner of painting - dense objects have tangible transparency, while solid ones spread, massive and three-dimensional figures acquire lightness and weightlessness, and incompatible ones can be combined together.

Biography of Rene Magritte

Along with the works of Salvador Dali is the work of Rene Magritte, a famous Belgian artist who was born in the city of Lesin in 1898. In the family, except for Rene. there were two more children, and in 1912 a misfortune happened that influenced the life and work of the future artist - his mother died. This was reflected in Rene Magritte’s painting “In Memory of Mack Sennett,” which was painted in 1936. The artist himself claimed that circumstances had no influence on his life and work.

In 1916, Rene Magritte entered the Brussels Academy of Arts, where he met his future muse and wife Georgette Berger. After graduating from the Academy, Rene worked on creating advertising materials, and was quite dismissive of this. Futurism, Cubism and Dada had a huge influence on the artist, but in 1923 Rene Magritte first saw Giorgio de Chirico's work "Song of Love". It was this moment that became the starting point for the development of the surrealist Rene Magritte. At the same time, the formation of a movement began in Brussels, of which Rene Magritte became a representative along with Marcel Lecampt, Andre Suri, Paul Nouger and Camille Gemans.

The works of Rene Magritte.

The works of this artist have always been controversial and attracted a lot of attention.

At first glance, Rene Magritte's painting is filled with strange images that are not only mysterious, but also ambiguous. Rene Magritte did not touch upon the issue of form in surrealism; he put his vision into the meaning and significance of the painting.

Many artists pay special attention to titles. Especially Rene Magritte. Paintings with the titles “This is not a pipe” or “Son of Man” awaken the thinker and philosopher in the viewer. In his opinion, not only the picture should encourage the viewer to show emotions, but also the title should surprise and make you think.
As for descriptions, many surrealists gave a brief summary of their paintings. Rene Magritte is no exception. Paintings with descriptions have always been present in the artist’s advertising activities.

The artist himself called himself a “magical realist.” His goal was to create a paradox, and the audience should draw their own conclusions. Rene Magritte in his works always clearly drew a line between the subjective image and real reality.

Painting "Lovers"

Rene Magritte painted a series of paintings called “Lovers” in 1927-1928 in Paris.

The first picture shows a man and a woman who are united in a kiss. Their heads are wrapped in white cloth. The second painting depicts the same man and woman in white cloth, looking out from the painting at the audience.

The white fabric in the artist’s work causes and has caused heated discussions. There are two versions. According to the first, white fabric in the works of Rene Magritte appeared in connection with the death of his mother in early childhood. His mother jumped off a bridge into the river. When her body was removed from the water, a white cloth was found wrapped around her head. As for the second version, many knew that the artist was a fan of Fantômas, the hero of the popular movie. Therefore, it may be that the white fabric is a tribute to the passion for cinema.

What is this picture about? Many people think that the painting “Lovers” personifies blind love: when people fall in love, they stop noticing someone or something other than their soul mate. But people remain mysteries to themselves. On the other hand, looking at the kiss of lovers, we can say that they have lost their heads with love and passion. Rene Magritte's painting is filled with mutual feelings and experiences.

"Son of Man"

Rene Magritte's painting "The Son of Man" became the hallmark of "magical realism" and a self-portrait of Rene Magritte. This particular work is considered one of the most controversial works of the master.

The artist hid his face behind an apple, as if saying that everything is not as it seems, and that people constantly want to get into a person’s soul and understand the true essence of things. Rene Magritte's painting both hides and reveals the essence of the master himself.

Rene Magritte played an important role in the development of surrealism, and his works continue to excite the consciousness of more and more generations.

"Everything we see hides something else,
we always want to see what is hidden behind what
what we see, but it is impossible.
People keep their secrets very carefully..."
(R. Magritte)

115 years ago, René François Ghislain Magritte was born, a Belgian surrealist artist known as the author of witty and at the same time poetically mysterious paintings...

In life

In a self-portrait

The phrase “unusual surrealist” sounds almost like “butter.” Oscar Wilde's behest - to make one's life an art - is strictly observed by the surrealists, turning their biographies into an endless performance with the obligatory scandalous statements, shocking antics and emotional striptease.

Against the backdrop of this endless carnival, the personal life of the Belgian artist Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte looks boring, even more so - oh horror! - bourgeois. Judge for yourself. Magritte did not smear himself with goat poop, did not organize sexual orgies, did not pretend to be an ideologist of the movement, did not write treatises on farting and masturbation, did not dance naked in the moonlight... He lived his entire life with only one woman, he preferred to work at home, in the living room, where the carpet has never even been stained with paint! And he also had an image - a suit, a bowler - well, just like the favorite heroes of his paintings - one-faced, respectable gentlemen.
Yes! He also didn’t like psychoanalysis - which for the surrealists of that time was a real “sacrilege”...

Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 in the small town of Lessines, Belgium. He spent his childhood and youth in the small industrial city of Charleroi. Life was hard.
In 1912, his mother drowned herself in the Sambre River, which apparently had a great influence on the future artist, who was then still a teenager; however, contrary to popular belief, the influence of this event on the author’s work should not be overestimated. Magritte brought back from his childhood a number of other, not so tragic, but no less mysterious memories, which he himself said were reflected in his work.

In 1916, Rene entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. After studying here for two years, he not only develops his talent and acquires a profession, but also makes acquaintance with young Georgette Berger. Later, in 1922, she would become Magritte's wife and muse for the rest of her life.

Georgette Berger became Magritte's only model.

Painting "Achieving the Impossible"

Photoimitation of a painting

During this time, he develops a deep dislike for arts and crafts. Later he will say: “I hate my past and anyone else’s. I hate humility, patience, professional heroism and the obligatory sense of beauty. I also hate arts and crafts, folklore, advertising, voices that make announcements, aerodynamics, Boy Scouts, the smell of mothballs, moment-to-moment events, and drunk people.”

After graduating from the academy, Magritte took eight years to make his way from poster designer to surrealist artist. At first, Rene was engaged in wallpaper and worked as an advertising artist. At the same time, he wrote his first works in the genre of cubism, but after a couple of years he was captured by the modernist movement of the Dadaists.

In 1926, the artist completed the first, in his opinion, worthwhile painting, “The Lost Jockey.”

"The Lost Jockey" (1948)
A simplified version of the 1926 painting. The surreal effect was achieved here by much more economical means - the trees resemble either leaves, from which only veins remain, or the circuits of the nervous system.

In 1927 he organized his first exhibition. Critics recognize it as unsuccessful, and Magritte and Georgette leave for Paris, where they meet Andre Breton and join his surrealist circle. In this circle, Magritte did not lose his individuality, but joining it helped Magritte find that signature, unique style by which his paintings are recognized. The artist was not afraid to argue with other surrealists: for example, Magritte had a negative attitude towards psychoanalysis and especially its manifestations in art. Indeed, the nature of his work is not so much psychological as philosophical and poetic, sometimes based on paradoxes of logic.

R. Magritte
“Art, as I understand it, is not subject to psychoanalysis. It is always a mystery. ...They decided that my “Red Model” is an example of a castration complex. After listening to several explanations of this kind, I made a drawing according to all the “rules” of psychoanalysis. Naturally, they analyzed it just as calmly. It’s terrible to see what kind of mockery a person who made one innocent drawing can be subjected to... Perhaps psychoanalysis itself is the best topic for a psychoanalyst.”

However, these statements did not at all dampen the ardor of the psychoanalysts themselves. They finally dug up the only relevant fact in the artist’s boring biography - the strange suicide of his mother, who, for no apparent reason, drowned herself in the river. Magritte was only fourteen at that time - what a childhood psychological trauma! This is why the faces in his paintings are often covered or obscured! After all, when the body of the drowned woman was found, his face was entangled in a nightgown. Magritte's attempts to refute these speculations, of course, led nowhere...

Difficult relationships with his colleagues more than once forced Magritte to distance himself from the term “surrealism.” “It’s better to call me a “magical realist,” the artist has repeatedly stated.

"Black magic"

Indeed, in Magritte’s drawing style there is practically no fluid plasticity of forms, characteristic of many surrealists. His images have clear boundaries, meticulously drawn details, cold staticity and therefore an almost tangible “objectivity”. Often the elements of a painting are extremely simple and realistic. And from these “elementary particles” Magritte creates truly magical structures.

The most important idea of all Rene Magritte’s paintings is that only the proximity of incompatible things allows one to clearly understand the essence and nature of each of them. The play of contrasts fills absolutely all of Magritte’s works with unique magic.

In each of his works, the artist depicted absolutely ordinary and familiar objects to humans: an apple, a rose, a castle, a window, a rock, a statue, a rainbow, a person.

The list can be continued endlessly, but believe me, you will not meet a single amazing, fictional character. All the mystery and magic is in the inexplicable and disproportionate combination of images. Many paintings show the contrast of the heaviness of the stone and the weightlessness of the sky. The gigantic sizes of juicy fruits and fresh flowers are inscribed within the tight confines of a gray room or concrete wall. In the paintings of Rene Magritte, a floating head and a broken window represent the unified idea of the art of freedom.

Magritte lived his entire life with the feeling that the world kept some secret hidden from the ordinary human eye. It is not for nothing that the artist called one of his paintings, which depicts an eye with clouds floating across the cornea, “False Mirror.”

But this idea is most clearly expressed in one of Magritte’s most famous and programmatic works - “The Treachery of Images” - where an ordinary pipe is accompanied by the ironic signature “This is not a pipe.” This seemingly simple picture became an excellent illustration for philosophical reflections on the difference between an object, an image and words. This is what conceptuality means.

R. Magritte:
“Really, is it possible to fill this pipe with tobacco? No, this is not a pipe, and I would be lying if I said otherwise.
...The word does not express the essence of the phenomenon. There is no connection between the image and its verbal expression. In general, words do not carry any information about the object they describe. The trees we see see us in the same way. They live with us. These are witnesses of what is happening in our lives. They hide many secrets. Then a coffin is made from the tree, the tree returns to the ground. Keeping our ashes and becoming ashes. To call the image of a tree “tree” is a mistake, a case of incorrect definition. An image is independent of the object it represents. What excites us in a painted tree has nothing to do with a real tree. And vice versa. What we enjoy in real life leaves us cold in depicting this beautiful reality. One should not confuse the real with the surreal and the surreal with the subconscious."

M. Foucault “This is not a pipe”:
"There is no contradiction in Magritte's statement: the drawing representing a pipe is not itself a pipe. And, nevertheless, there is a habit of speech: what is in this picture? - this is a calf, this is a square, this is a flower. The caligram is a tautology, it traps things in a double The caligram never speaks and does not represent at the same time; trying to be at the same time visible and readable, Magritte builds the caligram and then dismantles it. language and image. Negations multiply: This is not a pipe, but a drawing of a pipe; this is not a pipe, but a phrase that says that this is not a pipe. Kandinsky eliminates the ancient identity between similarity and affirmation with one sovereign gesture, ridding painting of both. operates through disunion: to break the connection between them, to establish their inequality, to force each of them to play its own game, to support what reveals the nature of painting, to the detriment of what is closer to discourse."

After terminating the contract with the Sainteau gallery, Magritte returned to Brussels and again worked with advertising, and then, together with his brother, opened an agency that gave them a regular income. During the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Magritte changed the colors and style of his paintings, approaching the style of Renoir: the artist considered it important to cheer people up and instill hope in them.

"Song of Love"

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on August 15, 1967, leaving a new version of his perhaps most famous painting, Empire of Light, unfinished.

"Empire of Light"

Sources