Rene Magritte Break One's Thoughts - written by 20424 Choi Sohi

Rene Magritte Break One's Thoughts

written by 20424 Choi Sohi

When I was looking into surrealism art as a school art project, I saw some unusual paintings that made me have questions. The paintings were a little different from the famous artists' paintings like Vincent Gogh‘s and Claude Monet's but had mysterious feelings. These pictures were drawn by Rene Magritte.
   
Surrealism happened in France, during the 1920s. It is art that expresses the fantasy and subconsciousness through free imagination. Surrealism is quite different from impressionism, which began in the late 19th century; surrealism expressed the dream world, while impressionism expressed the visible world. After World War II, people thought rationality was the cause of the war. Impressionism changed into surrealism since as people criticized about impressionism as only thinking importance of appearance.

To express the surrealism, many new techniques were created: depaysement, collage, frottage, decalcomania and so on. Magritte often used the way of depaysment. It is a technique that takes an object from its original position and places it in other situations, therefore, giving shocking effects.

There are many other surrealists like Salvador Dali and Rafal Olbinski. Salvador Dali, an artist from Spain, expressed the world of fantasy realistically. He created the painting, The Persistence of Memory. Rafal Olbinski is still working actively as an artist, now. She Stoops to Folly is one of his painting.

Magritte was born in 1898 Belgium. He started surrealism art because he was very impressed with Giorgio De Chirico’s pictures. De Chirico had a great influence on Magritte. In 1926, he joined the surrealist movement with Dali. In 1927, Magritte held his first exhibition in Brussels. However, it received harsh reviews from critics.

But he did not stop and continued to create many excellent paintings that expressed surrealism and had lots of effects on pop culture. Paul McCartney, a member of the Beatles was inspired by Margritte’s painting of an apple and made a company called Apple Records. Also, a novel The Empire of Light written by Yeongha Kim was quoted to be inspired by the work of Magritte.

Putting a picture in another picture or putting the name of an object was one of the expressional methods of Magritte. He questioned the relationship between the painted objects and the objects that actually exist in this way.

If we look at the work, The Treachery of Images, a pipe is drawn in it. However, below the pipe, it says, "This is not a pipe." What Rene Magritte wanted to say from this was that no matter how good the drawing is; it is just a reappearance. Rene Magritte also drew familiar objects in unexpected spaces and made people confused.                         

La Corde Sensible (The Heartstring) is a good example. In this picture, there is a cloud on a big and transparent glass. Magritte used the technique of depaysement so it made arcane feeling and the glass felt unfamiliar. Like this, he worked hard on paintings that created questions for the viewers.     

There are many good paintings, but the one that I especially like is Golconde. In this picture. it looks like it is raining in a city but if we look more closely, the raindrops are lots of men floating in the air with the same poses and clothes. This reminds us that the individuality of urbanites is deprived by society of organization. At first, I was surprised by the floating people because it made me feel like I was in space and the message that he told us through this picture surprised me once more. It also made me realize that one painting can hold lots of meanings.
 
Surrealism got a lot of love from the art community but some people criticized its illogical part. Actually, The Treachery of Images was evaluated by critics as follows: it made confusion in notionally.

Nevertheless, the reason why Magritte has been loved by many people is that his paintings showed his own peculiar imagination. "Art makes a mystery. The world without mystery does not exist," Magritte said. His pictures make us think unconventional thoughts and look at objects with from a new point of view.

Even today, Magritte is evaluated as a unique surrealist painter for drawing pictures philosophically.

<References>

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931
https://kin.naver.com/qna/detail.nhn?&dirId=3120101&docId=312037460

René Magritte
https://blog.naver.com/eowkd5694/220147946536 

Golconde, René Magritte, 1953
https://m.post.naver.com/viewer/postView.nhn?volumeNo=129337&memberNo=217778&vType=VERTICAL