René MagritteSurréalisme

Surréalism (surrealism)

an art movement that sought to realize the

creative potential of the unconsious mind

sur

réalismeon (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

Châteaudes

Pyrénées

Les Amants (1928)

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