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Magritte painting with pig title. Intellectual provocation by Rene Magritte, or the search for the meaning of the painting "The Son of Man

Magritte painting with pig title. Intellectual provocation by Rene Magritte, or the search for the meaning of the painting "The Son of Man

20.06.2019

My favorite surrealist boasts many masterpieces hung modestly in the museum named after him in Brussels. He is known to the general public thanks to two heads, a tightened piece of cloth, sitting coffins, an image of a pipe, as well as female genital organs that organically fit into the face. And, of course, thanks to him - the son of man.

The image of a man in a coat and a bowler hat runs like a red thread through all of Magritte's work. For the first time he draws a similar silhouette in 1926, calling the picture "Reflections of a lonely passerby." Some researchers of his work believe that the picture was painted under the impression of the death of the artist's mother. (Committed suicide by jumping off a bridge.)

A year later, the motif of the bowler hat and coat resurfaces in Magritte's work. "Meaning of the Night" The meaning of the night, of course, is in a dream.

Once again, Magritte recalls this image only in 1951, creating the painting "Pandora's Box". Presumably, the white rose is a symbol of the hope left at the bottom of the box.

In 1953, Magritte paints the famous Golconda rain of men. Rene himself claimed that this picture personifies the one-facedness of the crowd and the loneliness of the individual in it, who can touch real life - again - only in a dream.

In 1954, "The Great Century" and "The Schoolmaster" appear.

"Great Century"

"School teacher"

In 1955, a man in a coat and a bowler hat opens up from different angles. Three figures, three moons, three realities. "Masterpiece or Mystery of the Horizon"

In 1956, Magritte's alter ego loses its shape and mimics under the horizon - the work "The Poet Recreated"

In 1957, Magritte takes inspiration from Botticelli by placing Spring on the back of a man in a coat. "Ready Bouquet"

After a break of three years, in 1960 the coat returned to a grateful audience. It brings an apple with it. "Post card"

As well as representatives of the fauna. An important detail - a man in a coat and bowler hat turns to face us. "Presence of mind"

In 1961, Gagarin flew into space, and Magritte painted "Portrait of Stefi Lang", where he did not fail to place two sets of "bowler coats".

"Elite".

"Spirit of Adventure"

In 1963, Magritte again experimented a little with the form.

"Infinite Recognition"

"Proteer of Order"

In 1964 the artist paints the forerunner of The Son of Man. "Man in a bowler hat"

And finally, we got to perhaps the most famous painting by Magritte. "The Son of Man" was conceived as a self-portrait of the artist, symbolizing a modern man who has lost his individuality, but has not gotten rid of temptations.

In the same year, a variation of "Son of Man" - "The Great War" was written.

Two years after The Son of Man, Magritte returned to bowlers again. "Decalcomania" and "Royal Museum" date back to 1966.

"Decalcomania"

"Royal Museum"

On this, Magritte ended his relationship with bowlers, but it was too late - the image went to the masses. Playful little hands of fans of Apple products played a significant role in the vulgarization of the picture.

However, one should not blame only the adherents of a spoiled apple - as a rule, the adaptation of an idea by society is often painful for the author.

The apotheosis of the process is the transformation of the "son of man" into a new hero of progressive youth. I feel like Magritte just hit a nail in his coffin.

What do we have as a result? One of the key images of the artist is vulgarized and commercialized. On the other hand, isn't that proof of worldwide fame?

Son of man (painting)

Plot

Magritte painted this painting as a self-portrait. It depicts a man in a coat and a bowler hat, standing near a wall, behind which one can see the sea and a cloudy sky. The person's face is almost completely covered by a green apple hovering in front of him. The picture is believed to owe its name to the image of a modern businessman, who remained the son of Adam, and an apple, symbolizing the temptations that continue to haunt a person in the modern world.

The picture is present in the film " The Thomas Crown Affair" ().
The image of the picture is present in the animated series "The Simpsons" (season 5, episode 5).
An edited copy of the painting is featured on the posters for the television series Impact.
The movie "Character" contains a reference to the painting.
In The Miracle Shop, an unfinished version of the painting hangs on the wall in the toy store.
In the video for "70 millions" by Hold Your Horses! contains a parody of this picture.
In the TV series "White collar" there is a reference to the picture (season 3, episode 1).
The sketch show "Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy" has a character that is an allusion to the painting.
The picture is present in the video of Michael Jackson "Scream"

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Son of man (picture)" is in other dictionaries:

The expression Son of man is used in religious texts. "Son of Man" is the title of: Books The Son of Man is a book by Archpriest AV Men. The Son of Man is a book by the writer and researcher of early Christianity R.A. Smorodinov (Ruslana ... ... Wikipedia

Hieronymus Bosch ... Wikipedia

SOUL- [Greek. ψυχή], together with the body, forms the composition of a person (see the articles Dichotomism, Anthropology), while being an independent beginning; D. man contains the image of God (according to some of the fathers of the Church; according to others, the image of God is contained in everything ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia

"Passion of the Christ" redirects here; see also other meanings. "Carrying the Cross", Jean Fouquet, miniature from "Hours of Etienne Chevalier". In the medallion of Saint Veronica with ... Wikipedia

For the film, see The Passion of the Christ (film) Carrying the Cross by Jean Fouquet, miniature from Etienne Chevalier's Book of Hours. In the medallion is Saint Veronica with a headscarf. In the background is the suicide of Judas, from which the demon comes. Forging in the foreground ... ... Wikipedia

GOSPEL. PART I- [Greek. εὐαγγέλιον], the message of the coming of the Kingdom of God and the salvation of the human race from sin and death, proclaimed by Jesus Christ and the apostles, which became the main content of Christ's sermon. Churches; a book that puts this message in the form of ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia

- (Hebrew יוחנן המטביל‎) A fragment of the icon "John the Baptist" from the Deesis tier of the Nikolo Pesnoshsky Monastery near ... Wikipedia

John the Baptist (Heb. יוחנן המטביל‎) Fragment of the icon "John the Baptist" from the Deesis tier of the Nikolo Pesnoshsky Monastery near Dmitrov, first third of the 15th century. Andrei Rublev Museum. Gender: male Life span: 6 ... Wikipedia

Alogism, absurdity, a combination of the incongruous, paradoxical visual variability of images and figures - this is the basis of the foundations of surrealism. The founder of this trend is considered to be who, at the heart of surrealism, saw the embodiment of the theory of the subconscious of Sigmund Freud. It was on this basis that many representatives of the direction created masterpieces that did not reflect objective reality, but were just 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. All of them 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 illusory and literature of the XX 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 1920s. This direction was not territorially limited to France, spreading to other countries and continents. Surrealism greatly facilitated the perception of cubism and abstract art.

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

Distinctive characteristics of surrealism

Surrealism is a complex direction in painting, which many artists understood and understand in their own way. Therefore, it is not surprising that surrealism developed in two conceptually different directions. Miro, Max Ernst, Jean Arp and André Masson can be safely attributed to the first branch, 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 an unreal image generated by the subconscious of a person, 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 transmission of chiaroscuro and a careful manner of writing - dense objects have tangible transparency, while solid ones spread, massive and voluminous figures acquire lightness and weightlessness, and incompatible ones can be combined into one.

Biography of Rene Magritte

On a par 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 affected 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 the circumstances did not affect 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 the creation of promotional materials, and treated this rather dismissively. Futurism, cubism and Dadaism had a huge influence on the artist, but in 1923 Rene Magritte first saw the work of Giorgio de Chirico "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 current in Brussels began, and Rene Magritte became its representative along with Marcel Lekamte, André Suri, Paul Nouget and Camille Gemans.

The work of Rene Magritte.

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

At first glance, the painting by Rene Magritte 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 meaning of the picture.

Many artists pay special attention to titles. Especially Rene Magritte. Pictures with the names "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 the title should also surprise and make you think.
As for the descriptions, many surrealists gave a brief annotation to their canvases. Rene Magritte is no exception. Paintings with descriptions have always been present in the advertising activities of the artist.

The artist himself called himself a "magic realist". His goal was to create a paradox, and the public should draw its own conclusions. Rene Magritte in his works always clearly drew a line between the subjective image and the real reality.

Painting "Lovers"

Rene Magritte painted a series of paintings "Lovers" in 1927-1928 in Paris.

The first picture shows a man and a woman who have merged in a kiss. Their heads are wrapped in white cloth. The second canvas depicts the same man and woman in white cloth, who look from the picture to the public.

The white fabric in the artist's work causes and 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 the 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: falling in love, people 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, one can say that they lost their heads from love and passion. The painting by Rene Magritte 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 Rene Magritte's self-portrait. It is this work that 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. The painting by Rene Magritte both hides and reveals the essence of the master himself.

Rene Magritte played an important role in the development of surrealism, and his work continues to excite the minds of more and more new generations.

Plot

A man of indeterminate age in a well-tailored but unremarkable suit and bowler hat stands near a low fence. Behind him is the water surface. Instead of a face - an apple. In this surrealistic rebus, he encoded several themes that run through all his work.

"Son of Man", 1964. (wikipedia.org)

Incognito in a bowler hat is an image created on the contradictory combination of Magritte's passions. On the one hand, he adhered to the rules of the classical bourgeois, preferred to look inconspicuous, to be like everyone else. On the other hand, he loved detective stories, adventure films, especially about Fantômas. The story of a criminal who took the form of victims, staged hoaxes, deceived the police and always hid from persecution, excited Magritte's fantasy.

At the junction of the craving for order and disorder, this man was born, who seems respectable, but behind whose guise lies secrets unknown even to him. The same quiet pool with its devils.

In the same context, one can consider the allusion to the history of the fall into sin. Adam was expelled from paradise not because he agreed to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree, but because he did not take responsibility for the offense committed, which means that he did not justify the name of man as a divine creation.

Another motive that, one way or another, sounds in many works is the memory of a mother who committed suicide when Rene was 14 years old. She drowned in the river, and when, after some time, her body was taken out of the water, her head was wrapped in a nightgown. And although Magritte said later that this event did not affect him in any way, this is hard to believe. Firstly, in order to remain indifferent to the suicide of the mother at the age of 14, one must be with an atrophied soul (which cannot be said for sure about Magritte). Secondly, images of either water, or suffocating drapery, or a woman connected with the water element, appear in the paintings very often. So in the "Son of Man" behind the hero's back is water, and the barrier separating from it is extremely low. The end is inevitable, and its coming is unpredictable.

Context

By Magritte's definition, he created magical realism: using familiar objects, he created unfamiliar combinations that made the viewer uneasy. The names for the majority - all these enigmatic, enveloping formulations - were invented not by the artist himself, but by his friends. Having finished the next work, Magritte invited them and offered to arrange a brainstorming session. The artist himself left a rather detailed description of the philosophy of his art and perception of the world, his understanding of the relationship between the object, its image and the word.

"Reproduction is prohibited", 1937. (wikipedia.org)

One of the textbook examples is the 1948 painting “Treachery of Images”. It depicts a smoking pipe familiar to everyone, which in itself does not cause any unrest in the finely organized soul of an artistic nature. If not for the signature: "This is not a pipe." “How is this not a pipe,” the audience asked, “when it is perfectly clear that it cannot be anything but a pipe.” Magritte retorted: “Can you stuff her with tobacco? No, it's just an image, isn't it? So if I wrote “This is a pipe” under the picture, I would be lying!”

"Treachery of images", 1928−1929 (wikipedia.org)

Each work of Magritte has its own logic. This is not a series of nightmares and dreams, but a system of connections. The artist was generally skeptical about the zeal with which the surrealists studied Freud and, barely waking up, tried to capture in as much detail as possible what they saw in a dream.

The artist has a cycle of works - "perspectives", in which the heroes of the paintings of eminent masters die. That is, Magritte interprets those depicted on the canvases as living people who will die sooner or later. For example, Magritte took the portraits of Madame Recamier by David and Francois Gerard and painted two perspectives based on them. And you can’t argue: no matter how beautiful the socialite was, the same fate awaited her as the last slut.

Magritte did the same with Edouard Manet's Balcony, where he replaced people with coffins. Someone perceives the cycle of “perspectives” as art blasphemy, someone as a joke, but if you think about it, this is just a sober look at things.

The fate of the artist

Rene Magritte was born in the Belgian wilderness. The family had three children, it was not easy. The year after the death of his mother, Rene met Georgette Berger. After 9 years, they will meet again and will never part.

After school and a course at the Royal Academy of Arts, Magritte went to paint roses on wallpaper - he got a job as an artist at a factory. Then he moved on to advertising posters. After marrying Georgette, Magritte devoted more and more time to art. (Although from time to time he had to return to commercial orders - there was not enough money, Georgette had to work from time to time, which extremely depressed Rene - he, like a correct bourgeois, believed that a woman should not work at all.) Together they went to Paris, where they met with Dadaists and Surrealists, in particular, André Breton and Salvador Dali.

Returning to his homeland in the 1930s, Magritte remained faithful to his ascetic lifestyle by the standards of artists. There was no workshop in his house - he wrote right in his room. No unbridled drunkenness, sexual scandals, bohemian promiscuity. Rene Magritte led the life of an inconspicuous clerk. They had no children, only a dog.

Gradually he becomes more and more famous in Europe and the USA, he is invited to Britain and the States with exhibitions and lectures. The inconspicuous bourgeois is forced to leave his quiet corner.

During the war years, wanting to cheer up fellow citizens of the occupied fatherland, Magritte turns to impressionism. Using Renoir as a model, he chooses colors brighter. At the end of the war, he will return to his usual manner. In addition, he will begin experiments in cinema: having bought a camera in the 1950s, Magritte enthusiastically shoots short films with his wife and friends.

In 1967, Magritte died of pancreatic cancer. There are several unfinished projects left, on which the artist worked until the last days.

Sources

museum-magritte-museum.be
Lecture by Irina Kulik "Rene Magritte - Christo"
Alexander Tairov - about artists. Rene Magritte
Announcement and lead photo: wikipedia.org

Bella Adzeeva

The Belgian artist Rene Magritte, despite his undoubted belonging to surrealism, has always stood apart in the movement. Firstly, he was skeptical about perhaps the main passion of the entire group of Andre Breton - Freud's psychoanalysis. Secondly, Magritte's paintings themselves do not look like either the crazy plots of Salvador Dali or the bizarre landscapes of Max Ernst. Magritte used mostly ordinary everyday images - trees, windows, doors, fruits, figures of people - but his paintings are no less absurd and mysterious than the work 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 unbanal way. Art critics and connoisseurs still offer new interpretations of his paintings and their poetic titles, almost never associated with the image, which once again confirms that 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 consider them.

From that moment on, Magritte periodically returned to the image of a mysterious stranger in a bowler hat, portraying him either on a 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 half-sided, and sometimes - as, for example, in the painting High Society (1962) (can be translated as "High Society" - ed.) - the artist indicated only the 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, "The Son of Man" (1964) - Magritte's most replicated work, parodies and allusions to which are so common that the image lives already 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 by art critics and fans. The former again saw in the picture a reference to the artist’s childhood and the experiences associated with the mother’s suicide (when her body was taken out of the river, the woman’s head was covered by the hem of her nightgown - ed.). The simplest and most obvious of the existing versions - "love is blind" - does not inspire confidence among specialists, 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 knowing to the end close people, others understand "The Lovers" as a realized metaphor for "losing one's head with love."

In the same year, Rene Magritte painted a second painting called "Lovers" - on it the faces of a man and a 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 band Funeral for a Friend Casually Dressed & Deep in Conversation (2003) refers to it.

"Treachery of images", or It's not ...

The names of paintings by Rene Magritte and their connection with the image is a topic for a separate study. "Glass Key", "Achieving the Impossible", "Human Destiny", "Obstacle of the Void", "Beautiful World", "Empire of Light" are 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 has only to guess. “The titles are chosen in such a way that they do not allow me to place my paintings in the area of the familiar, where the automatism of thought will certainly work to prevent anxiety,” Magritte explained.

In 1948, he created the painting "Treachery of Images", which became one of Magritte's most famous works thanks to the inscription on it: the artist went from inconsistency to denial, writing "This is not a pipe" under the image of a pipe. "That 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 would be lying !" the artist said.

Sky Magritte

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 a particular artist. However, Magritte's sky cannot be confused with someone else's - more often 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 from the landscape, imperceptibly passes to 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 like the work of Magritte - in the evening landscape, at first glance, there was no place for unusual objects and mysterious combinations. And yet there is such a combination, and it makes the picture "Magritte" - a clear daytime sky over a lake and a house plunged into darkness.