René Magritte - Painter - Biography.com René Magritte René Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist best known for his witty and thought-provoking images and his use of simple graphics and everyday imagery. IN THESE GROUPS Académie Royale Des Beaux-Arts Synopsis René Magritte was born in Belgium in 1898. After attending art school in Brussels, he worked in commercial advertising to support himself while he experimented with his painting. In the mid 1920s he began to paint in the surrealist style and became known for his witty and thought-provoking images and his use of simple graphics and everyday objects, giving new meanings to familiar things. With a popularity that increased over time, Magritte was able to pursue his art full-time and was celebrated in several international exhibitions. He experimented with numerous styles and forms during his life and was a primary influence on the pop art movement. He died in 1967. A Difficult Crossing René François Ghislain Magritte was born in Lessines, Belgium, on November 21, 1898, the oldest of three boys.

His father’s manufacturing business at times allowed the family to live in relative comfort, but financial difficulties were a constant threat and forced them to move about the country with some regularity. Magritte’s young world was dealt a far more destructive blow in 1912, when his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in a river. Magritte found solace from the tragedy in films and novels and especially through painting. His earliest surviving works from this era were accomplished in the impressionist style. However, in 1916 he left home for Brussels, where for the next two years he studied at Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Although he was ultimately unimpressed with the institution, he was nonetheless exposed to emerging styles such as cubism and futurism, which significantly altered the direction of his work. Indeed, many of Magritte’s paintings from the early 1920s owe a clear debt to Pablo Picasso . The Treachery of Images In 1921 Magritte began his one year of compulsory military service before returning home and marrying Georgette Berger, whom he had known since he was a boy and with whom he would stay for the rest of his life.

After a brief stint in a wallpaper factory, he found work as a freelance poster and advertisement designer while he continued to paint. Around this time Magritte saw the painting The Song of Love by Italian surrealist Giorgio de Chirico and was so struck by its imagery that it sent his own work off in the new direction for which he would become known. Placing familiar, mundane objects such as bowler hats, pipes and rocks in unusual contexts and juxtapositions, Magritte evoked themes of mystery and madness to challenge the assumptions of human perception. With early works such as The Lost Jockey and The Menaced Assassin Magritte quickly became one of the most important artists in Belgium and found himself at the center of its nascent surrealist movement. But when his first one-man show—in 1927 at the Galerie le Centaure—was poorly received, a disheartened Magritte left his homeland for France. On the Threshold of Liberty Settling in the Perreux-sur-Marne suburb of Paris, Magritte quickly fell in with some of surrealism’s brightest lights and founding fathers, including writer André Breton , poet Paul Éluard and artists Salvador Dalí , Max Ernst and Joan Miró .

Over the next few years he produced important works such as The Lovers and The False Mirror and also began to experiment with the use of text, as seen in his 1929 painting The Treachery of Images. But despite the progress Magritte was making in his art, he had yet to find significant financial success, and in 1930 he and Georgette returned to Brussels, where he set up an ad agency with his younger brother Paul. Though the demands of their studio left Magritte little time for his own work over the next few years, interest in his paintings began to grow and soon he was selling enough to leave his commercial work behind. Surrealism in Full Sunlight In the late 1930s Magritte’s newfound popularity resulted in exhibitions of his work in New York City and London. But the onset of World War II would soon alter the course of his life and art. His decision to remain in Belgium following the Nazi occupation caused a split between him and André Breton, and the suffering and violence caused by the war led him away from the often dark and chaotic moods of surrealism.

“Against widespread pessimism,” he said, “I now propose a search for joy and pleasure.” Works from this period, such as The Return of the Flame and The Clearing, demonstrate this shift, with their brighter palettes and more impressionistic technique. After the war, Magritte finalized his break with Breton’s branch of surrealism when he and several other artists signed a manifesto titled “Surrealism in Full Sunlight.” A period of experimentation during which Magritte’s created garish and provocative paintings followed before he returned to his more familiar style and subject matter, including a 1948 reimagining of his Lost Jockey, painted the same year as his first one-man exhibition in Paris. The Enchanted Domain With the arrival of the 1950s, Magritte enjoyed ongoing international interest in his work and continued his prolific output. In 1951 he was commissioned to paint a cycle of murals for the casino at Knocke-le-Zoute, a town on the Belgian coast. Completed in 1953 and titled The Enchanted Domain, they were a celebration of some of his best-known images.

More commissions around Belgium followed, as did major exhibitions of his work in Brussels and the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York. Some of his most important works from this period include the paintings Golconda and The Glass Key. He also introduced the now-iconic apple into his work, most recognizably in 1964’s The Son of Man. Despite having been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1963, Magritte was able to travel to New York City for a 1965 retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art. Magritte also explored other media during this time, making a series of short films that featured his wife, Georgette, as well as experimenting with sculpture. After a period of prolonged illness, on August 15, 1967, René Magritte died at the age of 68. His work proved to be a primary influence on pop artists such as Andy Warhol and has since been celebrated in countless exhibitions around the world. The Magritte Museum opened in Brussels in 2009. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

Citation Information Rene Magritte Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Surrealism Surrealism Perhaps the most influential avant-garde movement of the century, Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by a small group of writers and artists who sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Much influenced by Freud, they believed that the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination. Influenced also by Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Conceptual Art Conceptual Art Conceptual art describes an influential movement that first emerged in the mid-1960s and prized ideas over the formal or visual components of traditional works of art. The artists often challenged old concepts such as beauty and quality; they also questioned the conventional means by which the public consumed art; and they rejected the conventional art object in favor of diverse mediums, ranging from maps and diagrams to texts and videos. Futurism Futurism Futurism was the most influential Italian avant-garde movement of the twentieth century.

Dedicated to the modern age, it celebrated speed, movement, machinery and violence. At first influenced by Neo-Impressionism, and later by Cubism, some of its members were also drawn to mass culture and nontraditional forms of art. Cubism Cubism Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline. This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas. Purism Purism Purism, an offshoot of Cubism, was a style advocated by architect Le Corbusier and artist Amadee Ozenfant. Frequently abstract, Purist works contain smooth geometric forms, even paint application, and machine-like shapes. Jean Metzinger Jean Metzinger Jean Metzinger was a French artist who was initially influenced by Fauvism and Impressionism, but then turned to Cubism. Metzinger was a member of the Section d'Or group of artists.

In 1912, together with Albert Gleizes, he created the first major treatise on Cubism, Du Cubisme. Fernand Léger Fernand Léger Influenced by Cubism and Futurism, the French painter Fernand Léger developed a unique style of Cubism using cylindrical and other geometric forms with mechanically smooth edges. Often colorful and punctuated by patterns, his paintings range from still lifes and figures to abstract compositions. Giorgio de Chirico Giorgio de Chirico Giorgio de Chirico was a Greek-Italian painter and sculptor commonly associated with Surrealism. Initially discovered by Picasso and Apollinaire in France, de Chirico's best known Surrealist paintings incorporated metaphysical subject matter and sculptural still-life. Instead of land- or cityscapes, de Chirico's art is more emblematic of a dreamscape. André Breton André Breton André Breton, author of the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, was an influential theorizer of both Dada and Surrealism. Born in France, he emigrated to New York during World War II, where he greatly influenced the Abstract Expressionists.

Max Ernst Max Ernst Max Ernst was a German Dadaist and Surrealist whose paintings and collages combine dream-like realism, automatic techniques, and eerie subject matter. Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí was a Spanish Surrealist painter who combined a hyperrealist style with dream-like, sexualized subject matter. His collaborations with Hollywood and commercial ventures, alongside his notoriously dramatic personality, earned him scorn from some Surrealist colleagues. Fauvism Fauvism Fauvism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Labeled as "wild beasts", Fauve artists favored vibrant colors and winding gestural strokes across the canvas. Pop Art Pop Art British artists of the 1950s were the first to make popular culture the dominant subject of their art, and this idea became an international phenomenon in the 1960s. But the Pop art movement is most associated with New York, and artists such as Andy Warhol, who broke with the private concerns of the Abstract Expressionists, and turned to themes which touched on public life and mass society.

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol Andy Warhol was an American Pop artist best known for his prints and paintings of consumer goods, celebrities, and photographed disasters. One of the most famous and influential artists of the 1960s, he pioneered compositions and techniques that emphasized repetition and the mechanization of art. Martin Kippenberger Martin Kippenberger Martin Kippenberger was a German artist born in 1953. During the last 10 years of his life, he created a series of drawings on hotel stationery - the 'hotel drawings.' Three of his pieces were used as cover art for the Welsh band Manic Street Preachers. Robert Gober Robert Gober Robert Gober is an American artist whose work often relates to domestic and familiar objects such as sinks, doors and legs. Despite their appearance, his sculptures are meticulously handcrafted. He represented the United States at the 2001 Venice Biennale. Paul Eluard Paul Eluard Paul Eluard was a French poet, and one of the original participants in the French Surrealism movement, forming strong ties with the likes of Breton, Aragon and Ernst.

Eluard was also active in the French Resistance during World War II, but later in life joined the Communist Party, became a Stalin sympathizer and renounced the Surrealism movement. Edward James Edward James Edward James was an English poet known for his patronage of the Surrealist art movement. He financially supported Dalí for two years and allowed Rene Magritte to stay in his London house to paint. He appears in two of Magritte's paintings. Impressionism Impressionism A movement in painting that first surfaced in France in the 1860s, it sought new ways to describe effects of light and movement, often using rich colors. The Impressionists were drawn to modern life and often painted the city, but they also captured landscapes and scenes of middle-class leisure-taking in the suburbs. Marcel Broodthaers Marcel Broodthaers Marcel Broodthaers was a Belgian poet, filmmaker and conceptual artist who was born in 1924. He worked principally with found objects and collage, which often contained text. His most noted work was an installation, Musee d'Art Moderne, Department of Eagles, which began in his Brussels home.

Joseph Kosuth Joseph Kosuth Joseph Kosuth is an American conceptual artist, philosopher and essayist. His most celebrated work is One and Three Chairs (1965), which doubles as a piece of commentary on Plato's Theory of Forms. He is likewise well-known for his 1969 essay "Art after Philosophy," considered a key text of postmodern art writing. John Baldessari John Baldessari John Baldessari, born in 1931, is an American conceptual artist. He often combines image and languages in his art. His early works were canvas paintings that were empty except for painted statements derived from contemporary art theory. His juxtaposition of image and text is reminiscent of Rene Magritte's surrealist paintings. Paul-Gustave van Hecke Paul-Gustave van Hecke Paul-Gustave van Hecke was a Belgian art patron and critic during the first half of the twentieth century. A friend to Rene Magritte, Max Ernst, and Man Ray, he founded Gallery L'Epoque in October 1927 and was the director of Variétés magazine. E. L. T. Mesens E. L. T. Mesens E. L. T.

Mesens was an artist and writer associated with the Belgian Surrealist movement. Mesens organized the first surrealist exhibition in his Belgian gallery in 1934. He also co-organized the London International Surrealist Exhibition. He became the director of the London Gallery and the chief editor of the London Bulletin. Paul Nouge Paul Nouge Paul Nouge was a Belgian poet and philosopher. A prominent member of the Surrealist school in Belgium, he was a friend and associate of fellow artists Louis Scutenaire, Marcel Marien, and Rene Magritte. He was a founding member of the Belgian Communist Party. Appropriation Art Appropriation Art Appropriation art adopts, borrows, recycles or samples aspects from visual culture. The term appropriation refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creation of a new work. Appropriation artists borrow ideas, images, objects, and elements from pop culture to create their art. René Magritte Bio - Belgian Surrealist Painter Magritte's Surrealism was unique and reflected his sense of humor. Rather than depicting fantastic creatures in fictional landscapes, he painted ordinary objects and people in realistic settings. The jokes were: His arrangements were often impossible under the laws of physics.

The scale of these mundane elements was frequently (and deliberately) "wrong." When words were painted -- as they were periodically -- you could bet they were a witticism of some sort. For a good example of the last point, look at Magritte's famous The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) from 1929. He very clearly wrote "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") on it. Now, if you were like me taking a first glance at this painting, you might have said, "Oh, please, René! That is quite obviously a pipe." But look again: you can't pack it with tobacco, light it, and smoke it. Why? Because it is only a picture of a pipe. And there is the joke.

continue reading below our video Test Your General Science Knowledge Date and Place of Birth: November 21, 1898, Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium René François Ghislain Magritte was the eldest of three sons born to Léopold (1870-1928) and Régina (née Bertinchamps; 1871-1912) Magritte. Early Life and Training: Aside from a few facts, almost nothing is known of Magritte's childhood. We know that the family's financial status was comfortable because Léopold, ostensibly a tailor, made handsome profits from his investments in edible oils and bouillon cubes. We also know that young René sketched and painted early on, and began taking formal lessons in drawing in 1910 -- the same year that he produced his first oil painting . Anecdotally, he was said to be a lackluster student in school. The artist himself had little to say about his childhood beyond a few vivid memories that shaped his way of seeing. Perhaps this relative silence about his early life was born when his mother committed suicide in 1912.

Régina had been suffering from depression for an undocumented number of years, and was so badly affected that she was usually kept in a locked room. On the night she escaped, she immediately went to the nearest bridge and threw herself into the River Sambre that flowed behind the Magritte's property. Régina was missing for days before her body was discovered a mile or so downriver. Legend has it that Régina's nightgown had wrapped itself around her head by the time her corpse was recovered, and an acquaintance of René's later started the story that he was present when his mother was pulled from the river. He was certainly not there. The only public comment he ever made on the subject was that he'd felt guiltily happy to be the focal point of sensation and sympathy, both at school and in his neighborhood. However, veils, curtains, faceless people, and headless faces and torsos did become recurring themes in his paintings. In 1916 Magritte enrolled in the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels seeking inspiration and a safe distance from the WWI German invasion.

He found none of the former but one of his classmates at the Academie introduced him to Cubism , Futurism, and Purism, three movements he found exciting. On a less visionary note, he emerged from the Academie qualified to do commercial art . Although creating ads and designs can be boring, it is steady work. Commercial jobs kept Magritte's bills paid until, decades into the future, he was able to paint "seriously" full time. Things Get Surreal: The Treachery of Images, 1928-29 The Key of Dreams, 1930 The Human Condition, 1934 The Listening Room, 1952 Golconda, 1953 René Magritte Biography (1898-1967): Life of Belgian Surrealist Artist Complete Works René François Ghislain Magritte was born on November 21, 1898 in Lessines, Belgium. His dad was a tailor and textile merchant, and his mom was a house wife. Magritte was the oldest out of his siblings, and started drawing lessons in 1910, at the age of 12.

Besides this, not much is known about his childhood, for he never talked about it. In 1912, his mom was found drowned in the River Sambre. She had committed suicide, and the family was publicly humiliated because of it. She had tried several times before to kill herself, but had failed at each attempt. René began to paint soon after, and his first painting was completed in 1915, in impressionism style. From 1916 to 1918, Magritte attended the Academié Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels. He left the school, because he thought that it was a waste of time. All his paintings afterward reflect cubism and futurism, the movements popular at the time. Photo by: Magritte Creative Commons Magritte signed up for the infantry in 1921, and served in Leopoldsburg, Austria, and Antwerp. The next year he was released, and he married Georgette Berger, whom he had known since childhood. René started a job at a local wallpaper factory, and designed posters and advertisements for them.

Around 1923, he sold his first art work, a painting of the singer Evelyn Brélin, which led to his contract at the Galerie la Centaure in 1926. This began his career as a full-time artist. His art work began to reflect his ideals, rather than following previous movements. Magritte’s pieces are associated with Surrealism, which was a period in art where the paintings tried to confuse people by fusing reality with the imagination, forcing the viewer to contemplate the image. One of his paintings during this time, The Lovers, painted in 1928, depicts a couple kissing, with their heads enshrouded by grey bags. This was meant to be a play on the picture. The people really aren’t kissing; the painting is just showing them kissing. Another piece, painted one year later, Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe (The Treachery of Images), has the same ideals. It really isn’t a pipe; it’s just a picture of a pipe. Photo by: Magritte Creative Commons René held his first exhibition in Brussels, 1927, but it was a flop.

It showed 61 of his pieces, all of which the critics hated. He and his wife moved to Paris afterwards, and became friends with André Breton. The Galerie de Centaure closed in 1929, and Magritte went back to work at the wallpaper factory, designing the posters and advertisements. During World War II, he remained in Brussels, even with the German Occupation there. Breton was furious, and severed ties with him. From 1943-1944, his art work changed, and showed influence from Auguste Renoir, an impressionist painter. To survive though, he forged copies of Picasso’s, Braque’s, and Chirico’s to sell to the Germans, which got him through the war. He regretted this later, but he did what he needed to survive at the time. He also made counterfeit banknotes to use. Photo by: Magritte Creative Commons Post-war, Magritte went back to his art, that of Surrealism. He painted The Promenades of Euclid in 1955, which was a painting within a painting.

If the viewer stares at the screen, it appears to be a castle obscured in the canopy of trees in a forest. But if one was to take a closer look, the castle is a painting residing on an easel, and that the forest is the only thing below. He wanted to trick people’s mind, and get them to think outside the box. The year before The Promenades of Euclid, René painted The Empire of Lights, which portrays a house, with blue skies above it, and the dark of night approaching the door step. René Magritte on ArtStack - art online Early life[ edit ] René Magritte was born in Lessines , in the province of Hainaut , Belgium, in 1898. He was the oldest son of Léopold Magritte, a tailor and textile merchant, [1] and Régina ( née Bertinchamps), who was a milliner before she got married. Little is known about Magritte's early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre .

This was not her first attempt at taking her own life; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Léopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. Her body was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. [2] Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several of Magritte's paintings in 1927–1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants. [3] Career[ edit ] Magritte's earliest paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. [2] From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels , under Constant Montald , but found the instruction uninspiring.

The paintings he produced during the years 1918–1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the figurative Cubism of Metzinger . [2] In 1922, Magritte married Georgette Berger , whom he had met as a child in 1913. [1] From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg . In 1922–23, he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie 'Le Centaure' in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with André Breton , and became involved in the surrealist group.

The illusionistic, dream-like quality is characteristic of Magritte's version of Surrealism. He became a leading member of the movement after leaving his native Belgium in 1927 for Paris, where he stayed for three years. [4] Galerie 'Le Centaure' closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte's contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. [5] He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage. During the early stages of his career, the British surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte's works, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, a painting also known as Not to be Reproduced . [6] During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II he remained in Brussels, which led to a break with Breton.

He briefly adopted a colorful, painterly style in 1943–44, an interlude known as his " Renoir Period", as a reaction to his feelings of alienation and abandonment that came with living in German-occupied Belgium. In 1946, renouncing the violence and pessimism of his earlier work, he joined several other Belgian artists in signing the manifesto Surrealism in Full Sunlight. [7] During 1947–48, Magritte's "Vache Period", he painted in a provocative and crude Fauve style. During this time, Magritte supported himself through the production of fake Picassos , Braques and Chiricos —a fraudulent repertoire he was later to expand into the printing of forged banknotes during the lean postwar period. This venture was undertaken alongside his brother Paul Magritte and fellow Surrealist and 'surrogate son' Marcel Mariën , to whom had fallen the task of selling the forgeries. [8] At the end of 1948, he returned to the style and themes of his prewar surrealistic art.

His work was exhibited in the United States in New York in 1936 and again in that city in two retrospective exhibitions, one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and the other at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992. Politically, Magritte stood to the left, and retained close ties to the Communist Party , even in the post-war years. However, he was critical of the functionalist cultural policy of the communist left, stating that "Class consciousness is as necessary as bread; but that does not mean that workers must be condemned to bread and water and that wanting chicken and champagne would be harmful. (...) For the Communist painter, the justification of artistic activity is to create pictures that can represent mental luxury". While remaining committed to the political left, he thus advocated a certain autonomy of art. [9] [10] On his religious views, Magritte was an agnostic. [11] Popular interest in Magritte's work rose considerably in the 1960s, and his imagery has influenced pop , minimalist and conceptual art .

[12] In 2005 he came 9th in the Walloon version of De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian); in the Flemish version he was 18th. Personal life[ edit ] Magritte married Georgette Berger in June 1922. Georgette was daughter of a butcher in Charleroi and had first met Magritte when she was only 13. They met again in Brussels in 1920 [13] and Georgette subsequently became Magritte's model and muse. In 1936 Magritte's marriage got into trouble when he met a young artist, Sheila Legg, and began an affair. Magritte arranged for his friend, Paul Colinet, to entertain and distract Georgette, but this led to an affair between his wife and Colinet. Magritte and his wife did not reconcile until 1940. [14] Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967, aged 68, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery , Evere , Brussels.

Philosophical and artistic gestures[ edit ] It is a union that suggests the essential mystery of the world. Art for me is not an end in itself, but a means of evoking that mystery. René Magritte on putting seemingly unrelated objects together in juxtaposition [15] Magritte's work frequently displays a collection of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, [16] The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally"—when Magritte was once asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.

[17] Magritte used the same approach in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit and then used an internal caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. In these "Ceci n'est pas" works, Magritte points out that no matter how naturalistically we depict an object, we never do catch the item itself. Among Magritte's works are a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Elsewhere, Magritte challenges the difficulty of artwork to convey meaning with a recurring motif of an easel, as in his The Human Condition series (1933, 1935) or The Promenades of Euclid (1955) (wherein the spires of a castle are "painted" upon the ordinary streets which the canvas overlooks). In a letter to André Breton, he wrote of The Human Condition that it was irrelevant if the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, "but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room." [18] The windows in some of these pictures are framed with heavy drapes, suggesting a theatrical motif.

[19] Magritte's style of surrealism is more representational than the "automatic" style of artists such as Joan Miró . Magritte's use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He described the act of painting as "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects—the sky, people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti—become united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry of this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new." [20] René Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable." [21] Magritte's constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother.

Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have hypothesized that Magritte's back and forth play with reality and illusion reflects his "constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—'mother is alive'—to what he knows—'mother is dead' ". [22] Artists influenced by Magritte[ edit ] Contemporary artists have been greatly influenced by René Magritte's stimulating examination of the fickleness of images. Some artists who have been influenced by Magritte's works include John Baldessari , Ed Ruscha , Andy Warhol , Jasper Johns , Jan Verdoodt , Martin Kippenberger , Duane Michals and Storm Thorgerson . Some of the artists' works integrate direct references and others offer contemporary viewpoints on his abstract fixations. [23] Magritte's use of simple graphic and everyday imagery has been compared to that of the Pop artists . His influence in the development of Pop art has been widely recognized, [24] although Magritte himself discounted the connection.

He considered the Pop artists' representation of "the world as it is" as "their error", and contrasted their attention to the transitory with his concern for "the feeling for the real, insofar as it is permanent." [24] The 2006–2007 LACMA exhibition "Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images" examined the relationship between Magritte and contemporary art. [25] In popular culture[ edit ] 500 francs shown portrait of Magritte Magritte's imagery has inspired filmmakers ranging from the surrealist Marcel Mariën to mainstream directors such as Jean-Luc Godard , Alain Robbe-Grillet , Bernardo Bertolucci , Nicolas Roeg , John Boorman and Terry Gilliam . [28] [29] [30] According to Ellen Burstyn , in the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years of "The Exorcist", the iconic poster shot for the film The Exorcist was inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières.

In the 1992 movie Toys , Magritte's work was influential in the entire movie but specifically in a break-in scene, featuring Robin Williams and Joan Cusack in a music video hoax. Many of Magritte's works were used directly in that scene. Main article: Magritte Museum The Magritte Museum opened to the public on 30 May 2009 in Brussels . [31] Housed in the five-level neo-classical Hotel Altenloh, on the Place Royale, it displays some 200 original Magritte paintings, drawings and sculptures [32] including The Return, Scheherazade and The Empire of Lights . [33] This multidisciplinary permanent installation is the biggest Magritte archive anywhere and most of the work is directly from the collection of the artist's widow, Georgette Magritte , and from Irene Hamoir Scutenaire , who was his primary collector. [34] Additionally, the museum includes Magritte's experiments with photography from 1920 on and the short surrealist films he made from 1956 on.

[34] Another museum is located at 135 Rue Esseghem in Brussels in Magritte's former home, where he lived with his wife from 1930 to 1954. A painting, Olympia (1948), a nude portrait of Magritte's wife by Magritte, was stolen from this museum on the morning of 24 September 2009 by two armed men. The stolen work is said to be worth about US$1.1 million. [35] [36] [37] Olympia was returned to the museum early January 2012. The thieves handed back the painting because they were unable to sell it on the black market due to its fame. [38] Selected list of works[ edit ] 1920 Landscape The Legacy of Magritte, Adman Turned Artist - artnet News René Magritte, Le Fils De L'Homme (Son of Man), (1973) Photo: courtesy Thurston Royce Gallery of Fine Art, LTD. Surrealist painter René Magritte created some of the most instantly recognizable images of the 20th century.

Using appropriated motifs and weaving them into his paintings, Magritte created timeless surrealist works that—despite the many times they themselves have been appropriated—still look fresh today. Born in Belgium in 1898, Magritte’s early life was marked by tragedy as his mother sadly took her own life when he was only 13 years old. It is rumored that she was found, drowned, with her dress covering her face—an image that would reoccur throughout his work. As a young man, Magritte studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1916 to 1918, but ultimately found traditional study uninspiring. When he left art school, he worked as a draughtsman in advertising and in a wallpaper factory. It was during this time that he developed his keen knowledge about the power of clear messaging through imagery. René Magritte Le Passager du Transatlantique (1936) Photo: Gallery Automne He began painting full time when he signed a contract with the gallery Le Centaure in 1926, and it wasn’t until a year later that he exhibited his early Surrealist work in his first exhibition, in Brussels.

The show was excoriated by critics, and the disheartened young artist moved to Paris, where he met other Surrealists and his career really began to blossom. Surrealism was following in the footsteps of the Dada movement, and Paris was at the center of all things avant-garde. On moving to the French capital, Magritte quickly met André Breton and other members of the experimentally playful movement. Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930, and resumed working in advertising. He continued to paint, and spent time working at the house of Surrealist patron Edward James in London. James is featured in two of Magritte’s works, Le Principe du Plaisir (1937) and La Reproduction Interdite (1937). Réne Magritte La Cascade (The Waterfall) (1961) Photo: courtesy Masterworks Fine Art Gallery Magritte’s most famous works—in keeping with the Surrealist tradition—question the nature of reality and perception, most notably in his painting of what appears to be a pipe, This is Not a Pipe (1928–29).

There is much debate as to the true meaning of this work, but the most accepted read is that this painting is not an actual pipe, but a painting of a pipe—or, rather, the idea of a pipe as represented by the artist. “If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream,” he is often quoted as saying. The Surrealist movement was made up of a variety of writers, artists, and thinkers, and as Magritte’s imagery became more sophisticated, he increasingly drew on imagery from literature, the media, and other artists’ work to create thoughtful narratives and visual puns. René Magritte Les Valeurs Personelles (Personal Values) (1952) Photo: courtesy Masterworks Fine Art Gallery “I’ve got nothing to express,” he exclaimed in an interview in 1951.“I simply search for images and I invent…only the image counts, the inexplicable and mysterious image, because all is mystery in our life.” Magritte used imagery from the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, André Derain , Pablo Picasso , and the metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico .

He also repeated his own motifs throughout his career, including the most famous, an anonymous businessman in a bowler hat. By returning to the same themes again and again, he created layered visual references and a kind of ongoing narrative. In Belgium after the second World War—although this is when Magritte created some of his most famous works—there little money for art, and Magritte supported himself through forgery. He replicated artworks, including Picassos, and even forged banknotes in a scam he ran with his brother. René Magritte La Magie Noir (Black Magic) (1945) Photo: Masterworks Fine Art Gallery It was during the 1960s that Magritte became widely recognized, and he exhibited at MoMA in New York in 1965, two years before his death at the age of 68. Magritte’s accessible painting style and clear, allegorical—sometimes borrowed—imagery has been credited with influencing the Pop Art movement. Artists who cite him as an important influence include Andy Warhol , John Baldessari , Jasper Johns , and Ed Ruscha , among others. Magritte nevertheless sought to distance himself from Pop Art.

Magritte’s work has truly entered the mainstream, and is appreciated by an audience wider than one typically enjoyed by a fine artist. His painting The Son of Man (1946) was prominently featured in the classic heist movie, The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), and in cult movie director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s avant-garde fantasy film, The Holy Mountain (1973). More recently, a large-scale exhibition at LACMA exploring Magritte’s influence on contemporary art: “Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images” ran from 2006–2007. In 2013, the Museum of Modern Art dedicated another retrospective to this artist, “Magritte: The Myster of the Ordinary, 1926–1938,” featuring 80 paintings, collages, and objects. Magritte enjoyed real fame during his lifetime, and was well-respected in his native Belgium. In honor of their native son, the comprehensive Musée Magritte opened in Brussels in 2009, with a collection of 200 works, including photography and film.

Through these and other exhibitions, Magritte’s widespread influence continues to endure. Smoke and mirrors: The surreal life and work of René Magritte | The Independent Features Smoke and mirrors: The surreal life and work of René Magritte The largest ever British exhibition of the Belgian artist's work opens later this month at Tate Liverpool. There's still much to learn about the master of Surrealism. Thursday 9 June 2011 23:00 BST Click to follow Smoke and mirrors: The surreal life and work of René Magritte 1/6 Charly Herscovici, c/o ADAGP, Paris 2011 2/6 Photothaque R. Magritte - ADAGP, Paris 2009 6/6 Charly Herscovici, c/o ADAGP, Paris 2011 We all think we know Surrealism. Its imagery, its juxtapositions and paradoxes, its reach into the subconscious of dreams and imaginings has become so much part of the visual language of commerce as well as of art that it is almost impossible to conceive of the last century without it.

And yet its very popularity has made us forget what its artists and poets were actually trying to achieve – to make us see the world and ourselves afresh. Of no artist is this more true than of René Magritte, the great Belgian Surrealist. His images of the bowler hat, the loaf clouds and the falling rain of figures, have become the best-known symbols of the movement and the instantly recognisable reference points of advertising as well as popular art. And yet the intention of this purist of the Surrealists and the most literate and articulate of its painters, has somehow been lost in the popularity of his works. He, who had hoped to open our eyes to a new way of looking through the simplest of forms, has been obscured by their very success. It's a paradox which the Tate Liverpool is hoping to address through an exhibition later this month, the first major show of his work in this country for a generation and, so the gallery boasts, the biggest ever held in the UK – a hundred paintings alongside drawing, gouaches, examples of the commercial work he undertook and some of his home movies as well as his later sculpture.

"The object", explains the curator of the show, Darren Pih, "is to explore what motivated this singular artist and show how he has become even more relevant in today's world." Their task is not as easy as it may appear on the flat surfaces which Magritte so carefully worked up. Look at his work and you are struck by two things. One is the directness of the imagery. The other is the way that they are composed to confuse and disorientate you. A view of a landscape through a window in La Condition Humaine of 1933 is partially obscured by a painted canvas of exactly the same view hidden behind it. The landscape is both within and outside the room. "Visible things always hide other visible things," as Magritte put it, implying that the landscape itself may be only a canvas hiding something unknown beyond. That is Magritte and his fellow Surrealists, endlessly playing with reality and illusion in an effort to break your assumptions about the solidity of objects and, in Magritte's case, to arouse in you a sense of the mystery of things and thought.

A host of bowler-hatted men in Golconda of 1953 hang in space along geometrically arranged lines across a streetscape, as if they were rain, only whether they are rising or falling is an open question. A train comes out of the fireplace beneath a clock in Time Transfixed of 1938, only the train is going nowhere and the mirror is largely blank – time- and motion-less. The nude figure of a woman is imprisoned in a glass bottle that confines her flesh in its straight, glassy lines in Bottle-Woman (1945). A man paints a bird with flapping wings in Clairvoyance (1936) while actually looking at an egg. A meal with wine and fruit is recalled in Souvenir de Voyage, only the fruit and table are petrified as rocks and the doors open up not to field and sky but a wall of real rocks. The Intimate Friend from 1960 is seen, bowler-hatted again, from the back, with the images of bread and wine hovering behind his back. A couple kiss in The Lovers of 1928, only with their heads covered in sheets.

Most famous of all, a perfectly painted pipe in Treachery of Images from 1929 has the legend, "This is not a pipe", in the supreme example of Magritte's obsession with bringing words into the picture, not just as a comment on the painting but also as source of ambiguity and multi-meanings themselves. Playful or just perverse, childlike or merely jejeune? What marks the Surrealists is their humour, their desire to surprise through playfulness. Only this jokiness, intended to disconcert, makes it – as it was intended – almost impossible to know just how seriously to take them or their compositions, how far to puzzle away for meanings in works that are meant to portray meaninglessness. Of all movements, Surrealism was the most intellectual and wordy. Its progenitors were poets and philosophers as much as artists, endlessly discussing the meaning of meaningless in our existence. Indeed, for some of its leading proponents, painting had no real place at all. Even trying to represent objects in order to deny them was a form of affirmation of the real that didn't fit with their philosophy.

Forever changing partners and producing new manifestos, they held endless meetings to discuss new projects and whether to expel members for heresy in a two-decade-long performance that fitted every expectation of satirists, then and now. Magritte split with André Breton, the self-appointed leader and main theoretician of the Surrealist movement, when at a dinner party in Paris in 1930, Breton loudly demanded that Magritte's wife remove the cross from around her neck as incompatible with the movement's anti-clerical principles. She got up and left. So did her husband. Breton and Magritte barely communicated for the next two years. But then Magritte, a few years later, was party to the expulsion of one of the Belgian group's leading musical members for agreeing to conduct an orchestra at a Mass. Back in Brussels during the occupation, so his friend Marcel Marien recalled in his autobiography, Magritte and his brother made money by producing fake pictures by the masters as well as banknotes. True or false? Magritte was certainly proficient and knowledgeable enough to do it. Copying and passing off paintings as real was well within the code of Surrealism. But then there's no evidence that it actually happened.

Paradox was the fundament of Surrealism and Magritte was the most paradoxical of all its proponents. He presented an entirely respectable bourgeois front, happily married, living in the more salubrious parts of Brussels and painting not in a studio but a corner of the living or dining room. Yet his whole life was spent subverting the bourgeois and their values. A man who made his living for a time designing wallpaper and illustrating fur-coat catalogues, he expressed contempt for his past as a commercial artist and attacked their values in the harshest terms. The painter who best understood that a picture is worth several hundred thousand words spent much of his time trying to explain them in words not just on the canvas but through letters, speeches, essays and tracts. An artist who was perfectionist in his portrayal of objects, he kept denying the value of a painterliness of which he himself was master. Of all Surrealists, Magritte was the most collegiate, hugging close the Belgian group of which he was a member at its founding in 1926 right until the end of his life in 1967.

And yet, in most ways, he was a loner as an artist, at the fringes but never fully accepted in the centre of the international Surrealist movement in Paris. This was partly – mainly, perhaps – because he was Belgian. The major painters who gathered in Paris – Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, André Masson and Yves Tanguy – came from all parts of Europe, especially Spain. But they gathered in France under the aegis of the writers Breton and George Bataille. Magritte settled there for a couple of years between 1927-30, in the first flush of his Surrealist ardour. Although he made good friends, wrote and produced illustrations for the main periodicals and attended meetings, he never broke through in Paris. His first one-man show there wasn't until after the Second World War and then he expressed contempt for the city of his youthful dreams by showing a collection of brutal pastiche works of French artists, in his co-called Vache Period. French snobbery against the Belgians – always a recurrent theme in Parisian circles? That certainly played a part.

But it was also that Magritte, coming from a bourgeois background in such a bourgeois country with so unsettled a history as Belgium, absorbed both its sense of "correctness" and insecurity, and reacted against them. He was a teenager when his motherland was first occupied by the Germans and into his forties when they did so again. Magritte always stayed intensely loyal to the country of his birth and his circle there. He remains something of a mystery, despite the number of letters he wrote and friends he made. Much has been made of the suicide of his mother when he was only 13. The story went that he saw the body of his mother dragged from the river where she drowned herself, and that the image of her face covered by the wet nightdress in which she had gone out remained with him all his life and accounted for his repeated use of clothed faces. That may be so, although diligent research in the manner of our academic times has produced no evidence that he actually saw the body's recovery. The death of his mother, who had been depressed for some years and was kept locked in her room for most of the time, must have affected him.

Great screeds have been written by psychiatrists and would-be psychologists explaining how this experience accounted for the peculiarities of his vision. Much of this seems the usual tosh written by psychiatrists when trying to analyse the creative process. You don't need personal tragedy to explain Surrealism and their Freud-inspired interest in the unconscious. What marks out Magritte is not the passion behind his work but the formalism of his art and the fragility of his feeling. From the start he approached art as a means of articulating his view of life as something elusive, disturbing and mysterious. "They want to revolutionise art," he later said of young artists, "I wanted to break free from it." He did this first by trying out Cubism and the experiments of Braque and Picasso in viewing objects from the inside out and then by dabbling in Dadaism, with its notions of the absurd and the essential alienation of man. His moment of epiphany, however, came when he saw a reproduction of de Chirico's Love Song, a masterpiece by the Italian godfather of Surrealism in which the mundane and the artificial are mixed with the human and the organic to create an impression of timelessness and mystery.

It was the mystery, the sense of wonder, that attracted Magritte and made him so different from most of his fellow Surrealists. Where Joan Miro espoused the "automatic" approach, letting the unconscious determine the line, and Dali reached into the dreamworld, returning to three-dimensional and figurative art in his later work, Magritte kept rigidly to his canon of flat dimensions and frozen images. What he wanted, and what he achieves in his best work, was not so much to challenge the viewer as to intrigue him into seeing life liberated from the concrete and the present. Magritte wanted to puzzle the onlooker, hence his wordplay, but he also wanted to cheer his audience. His reaction to the German occupation of Belgium in the Second World War was to break out of his traditional style into using Impressionist brushwork on the grounds that, in the days of darkness, people needed to feel joy. His reaction to the end of the war was to explode into his Vache period, when his images became almost comic in their extremes It didn't work for the gallery owners or for the audience, and Magritte soon returned to a more sober style, but also a more ethereal one.

His later works have a poise, a serenity indeed, that suggest that the artist had achieved a comfort with what he was doing. Home movies and, at the last, sculptures took his new fancy but the images he favoured remained the ones in paint. The Tate Liverpool argues that the reason for reviewing him now is that he has become more relevant than ever. That is true in artistic terms. Where would Gilbert and George or half the sculptors working today be without his influence? The Surrealist belief that an inanimate object is as human as an organic, that the world of appearance is also the world of disguise, and that image is the mechanism for understanding the many levels of reality, are the commonplace of pop and conceptual art. What is lacking is Magritte's sense of doubt opening up to wonder, and wonder opening up to doubt. It's what makes Magritte so popular with the public. He may confuse but, unlike most of the other Surrealists, he doesn't set out to tell you things but to lead you out of them into a freer vision. He's on your side. Not that he isn't complicated and elusive at times.

Although he was much praised by the pop artists of the post-War period he was somewhat dismissive of them. "The humour," he said in a television interview, "of Pop Art is rather 'orthodox', it is within the reach of any successful window-dresser; to paint large American flags with one star more or less does not require any particular freedom of mind and does not present any technical difficulty." The irony for Magritte is that it is because his images seem within the reach of the successful window-dresser that he is so well known. We don't need a big new show to confirm a reputation long since risen from the margins of critical theory and Modernist dismissal. But we do need one that displays the "freedom of mind" and the mastery of "technical difficulties" he struggled so persistently to achieve. If by presenting his works in their full variety and through thematic display (as it is doing) the Tate Liverpool can bring an audience to feel that ambition then it will have served its purpose. "We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world," he once said. That is what gives René Magritte his real relevance today.

'René Magritte: The Pleasure Principle' will be at Tate Liverpool from 24 June to 16 October (0151 702 7400; ) More about:

Question: What was the nationality of the artist Rene Magritte?
Answer: BELGIAN