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Rene Magritte, paintings, philosophical riddles and surrealism. Rene Magritte paintings

Rene Magritte, paintings, philosophical riddles and surrealism. Rene Magritte paintings

18.04.2019

Bella Adzeeva

The Belgian artist René Magritte, despite his undoubted belonging to surrealism, has 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 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, depicting him either on a sandy seashore, or on a city bridge, or in a green forest or facing 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 marked only the contour of a man in a bowler hat, filling it with clouds and foliage. Most famous paintings, depicting a stranger - "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 already lives separately from its creator. Initially, Rene Magritte painted the picture as a self-portrait, where the figure of a man symbolized modern man who lost his individuality, but remained the son of Adam, who is unable to resist temptations - hence the apple that covers 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 general mood changed from tense to relaxed.

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

"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", "Void Obstacle", " beautiful world"," Empire of Light "- poetic and mysterious, they almost never describe what the viewer sees on the canvas, and one can only guess what meaning the artist wanted to put into the name in each individual case. "The names are chosen in such a way that they do not allow me to place my paintings in the realm 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 the most famous works Magritte, thanks to the inscription on it: from inconsistency, the artist came to denial, under the image of a pipe, writing "This is not 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 to make it " calling card"A particular artist seems impossible. 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 bizarre mirrors and huge eyes, fills the contours of birds and, together with the horizon line from the landscape imperceptibly goes 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.

During his life, Magritte painted about 2000 paintings, in 50 of which the hat appears. The artist painted her between 1926 and 1966, and she became hallmark Rene's work.

Previously, a bowler hat was worn by ordinary representatives of the bourgeoisie, who did not really want to stand out from the crowd. "The bowler hat... is not surprising," Magritte said in 1966. “This is a headdress that is not original. The man with the bowler hat is just a middle-class man [hidden] in his anonymity. I wear it too. I don't try to stand out."

Rene Magritte. 1938

Bowler hats were introduced specifically for the British middle class in the second half of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the bowler hat became one of the most popular hats. The headdress was considered informal and practical at the same time, which made it an indispensable part of the men's wardrobe.

True, in the 1920s there were also episodes when the accessory appeared in Magritte's career. At that time, the artist left his work as an illustrator for a fashion catalog. early paintings contain references to pop culture, which was then associated with a bowler hat. Magritte, who was an avid lover of crime fiction, was working on the painting "The Killer in Peril", where two detectives in bowler hats are preparing to enter the room where the murder was committed.

The killer is in danger. 1927

Then the artist abandoned the "hat" motif, not using it for several decades. Hats reappeared on canvas in the fifties and sixties, becoming an important part of René's later career. By that time, associations with a man in a hat had changed dramatically: from a clear reference to the profession (to detectives, mostly), to a symbol of the middle class.

But, as it should be in the work of Magritte, everything is not as it seems to us. "He plays with that feeling: 'We think we know who this person is, but do we?' says Caitlin Haskell, organizer of the René Magritte exhibition in San Francisco. “There is a sense of intrigue here, despite the fact that the figure itself is stereotypically bourgeois and of no particular interest.”

A masterpiece, or the secrets of the horizon. 1955

“If you take the genius of Magritte and have to describe it in one sentence: “Why is Magritte so important? Why are his images an integral part of the public imagination and consciousness?” All because he creates incredibly understandable and clear pictures that don't make a lot of sense,” says Ann Umland, curator of paintings and sculptures at the New York Museum contemporary art. "A bowler hat works that way."

There is a theory that the hat functioned as an "anonymizer" for René himself. Around the time when headdresses reappeared in the paintings, Magritte began to wear a hat for photo shoots. It is quite possible that gallant gentlemen of the paintings are self-portraits of René himself.

This is illustrated in a painting called "The Son of Man", which acts as a self-portrait of the artist. René draws a bowler hat and a large apple floating in front of his face, obscuring his real personality.

Son of man. 1964

However, in the 50s, the streets of the city ceased to abound with bowler hats. The accessory became old-fashioned, and the trend-following townspeople had to abandon it. Then Magritte's hats, drawn in realistic style(at the height of abstract expressionism), became a symbol of anonymity. In René's paintings, they came to the fore, instead of disappearing into the faceless crowd.

In fact, bowler hats have become Magritte's iconographic signature. It turns out a funny irony: the artist chose a detail that would ensure unrecognizability, but everything worked the other way around. Now the bowler hat is one of the main objects of creativity of the legendary Rene Magritte.

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 posturing in the art of Rene Magritte. He does not "interest" with the viewer with the help of his mysterious paintings. Instead, he urges thinking.

Painting that is pleasing to the eye is not art for Magritte. It is completely empty for him.

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

Having once broken his creative ties with Andre Bretton (the 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 part with 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 Lessine (Belgium). Later a short time three more brothers were born.

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 had happened. He has always believed in the power of thought. You just need to try hard, and then the mind will find the answers.

Today, art historians are arguing about the impact on the painter of the tragedy of childhood. Some believe that it was under the auspices of this drama that a series of paintings depicting mermaids appeared. True, Magritte has mermaids on the contrary: 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 gloomy page of the 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 visionary. He came up with unprecedented games and entertainment. But René's romantic mindset was alien to his brothers. They never managed to become family people.

Who knows, maybe we have a portrait of one of his brothers. Which reflects the cool relationship between blood relatives.

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

Life long love

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

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

Only one story overshadowed them 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.

It was during this period for some reason that Magritte painted this portrait of Georgette.

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

This portrait is particularly postcard-like. Such openness is characteristic of almost all of Magritte's paintings.

In 1940, the couple reunited again. And they didn't part.

After the death of her husband, Georgette recalled that until now, looking at his paintings, she talks with him and often argues.

Magritte did not want to embody his love as a kind of cliché. In an effort to get to the essence of this feeling, he creates the canvas "Lovers". On 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 do not see the faces of the heroes. Such impersonality was characteristic of almost all the works of the artist.

Even if there was no veil on the faces, the features of the face 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 gone beyond the threshold of the "alma mater", he began to painfully look for a livelihood.

He could not go against his idea, adjusting to the tastes of the public. Therefore, he got a job in a workshop that painted wallpapers.

It is hard to imagine a sadder contradiction: the artist, who most of all tried to capture the idea, was forced to draw flowers on the wallpaper.

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

There is a series of negative paintings where the artist deliberately draws, for example, a pipe and leaves a signature: "This is not a pipe." Thus drawing attention to what is behind the familiar shell of the subject.

Rene Magritte. 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, do not deform. They are realistic and recognizable.

But in the compositional aggregate they form some completely new idea. The master claimed that a special meaning is “sewn up” in each of his paintings. No pointless clutter.

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

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 Magritte 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, not smeared across the floor.

However, his paintings were just as “clean” and even rather dry. Sharp lines, ideal forms. Ultimate realism, turning into an illusion.

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

With the onset of the war, Magritte began to paint pictures that were not characteristic of his style. The period “ ” will be called this time by art critics.

Rene believed that it was his civic duty to write life-affirming images, giving the viewer hope. Dove of peace with a tail of flowers - a prime example"military" art of Magritte.

Rene Magritte. Auspicious omen. 1944 Private collection. Wikiart.org

Achieved immortality

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

Suffice it to recall his parodies of famous paintings by other artists, where he replaced all the characters with coffins. This is how the picture “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 forever gone into oblivion.

But did Magritte manage to cheat death? His wife Georgette claimed yes! He is alive in his paintings, in riddles, puzzles, which each carries in itself. And urging the viewer to find their answer.

After the death of the artist from pancreatic cancer in 1967, Georgette until the end of her days kept intact everything that belonged to her talented spouse - brushes, palette, paints. And on the easel still stood the unfinished painting “Empire of Light”.

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

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Created mysterious paintings Rene Magritte was born at the end of the 19th century in the small country of Belgium. IN early childhood he was frightened by chess and musical signs, according to his recollections. His mother drowned in a river by jumping from a bridge when Rene was 13 years old. Pulling out the corpse, they found that her head was wrapped in a gas cloth. From here, portraits without faces appeared in the work of the future artist.

After studying at the Royal Academy in Brussels for two years, Belgian artist Magritte Rene left there, becoming an advertising artist at a paper mill. In 1926 he went to work in the Sento Gallery, having signed a contract. From that moment on, he is. His first exhibition in 1927 was criticized. Then Rene, having terminated the contract, and his wife Georgette Berger leave for Paris, where the artist joins the circle of surrealists. In some ways, he does not agree with them, considering himself a "magic surrealist." Paris gets bored, and the couple return to their homeland, to Brussels. Again advertising work, Rene and his brother open an agency.

The Second World War, Belgium in occupation. Rene Magritte paints paintings similar to style. IN postwar period Magritte's canvases were incredibly popular in the United States, exhibition after exhibition, a lot of money, recognition and fame fell upon the artist. Magritte Rene himself lived modestly, lived all his life with one wife and died of cancer at the age of 68.

And now, almost 42 years later, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts opened a museum where there were only works by the mystic artist Magritte. The very view of the building in an unusual style, a sliding curtain on the wall, behind which there are trees, a blue sky and an entrance somewhere. So the Belgians honored the memory of Rene, who painted his paintings with a philosophical meaning.

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Artist Rene Magritte paintings

big family

human destiny

fake mirror

Empire of Light

Unknown

ignorant fairy

Nostalgia

Travel memory

Love song

Portrait with a pipe

beautiful world

Obstruction of the Void

Magritte, Rene

Rene Magritte(Rene Magritte) 1898 - 1967 - Belgian surrealist painter. Philosopher of surrealism in the visual arts. Known as an author strange pictures in which there is ambiguity, mystery. Unlike other surrealists who seek to distort the object itself (form, image), in the paintings of Rene Magritte, the "objectivity" of the image is almost not affected - the meaning, perception, understanding, and plurality of meanings are surreal.

In each of his paintings, Magritte prepares a paradox. Each painting is a combination of an image, the way it is depicted, and even the name of the painting. Magritte gave the names of paintings special meaning- they seem to "direct" the viewer into reflections, enter into a "rebus". They set the viewer to search for clues, but the answers found will be a paradox or an aporia for logic. This situation forces the viewer to plunge into thought processes, the conclusions from which may surprise the viewer himself. The viewer involuntarily becomes a philosopher.

This is what the artist wants. For the similar effect of his paintings, he calls himself " magical realist ". As Rene Magritte himself said, his goal is to make the viewer think. And the style of the deliberate primitive simplicity of the images makes you focus on their symbolism. Like no one else, Rene Magritte used and "speculated" the principle - the world is ruled by symbols.

A similar practice of perceiving ambiguity and involuntary development of thought processes exists in the practices of Zen Buddhism, when paradoxical (contrary to logic) tasks lead to a stormy process of finding an answer, and in end result- to understanding the harmonious beauty of answers. Philosophy of unity and integrity of opposites.

But Rene Magritte does not seek to develop the intellectual component of his work, he cynically exploits the already gained popularity. He stops only at the effect of visual perception, only creates a paradox of perception, and leaves the subsequent conclusions to the viewer.

Unfortunately, the artist did not develop his unique style. Although Magritte had many late works in the form of "variations" of the past good pictures that received recognition. The semantic content of the paintings focuses on the idea - the paradoxical difference in perception between the image (image) and reality.

famous image the man in the bowler hat becomes a symbol of the artist himself. Painting - " son of man", has become a real masterpiece of the whole concept of the "magic realist" Rene Magritte, giving rise to many discussions, reading variations. Even for a society where the modernist perception of the world and religion has become the norm, such use of symbols in the picture can be called an intellectual provocation. When conflicting conclusions are born in the viewer in his own head.

Despite the external primitivism in the technique of execution, the artist and his images become a very prominent figure in the culture of Europe. His works and their symbolism become recognizable in society. Magritte's portrait is featured on the 500 Belgian franc banknote.

Paintings by Rene Magritte:

1928-1929

1936

1967 - Magritte died of pancreatic cancer.