Rene Magritte

The artist I chose to write about this week is Rene Magritte.   I have not had the privilege of viewing his art before talking about him in class this past week.  His paintings are very unique because he uses the idea of illusion in his work. As someone viewing the painting questions come into mind such as, what part of the painting is actually real and which part is just an illusion?  Where does the illusion begin and end?

            Another part of Magritte’s artwork that is hard for me to explain because I don’t want to make it sound like his work is random, but in some of his paintings such as The Son of Man, and La Chateau des Pyrenees, the objects put into the painting really do seem random.  Like why is that even there? Or What was he thinking when making this? 

 One picture that I picked to analyze is the picture called La Seize Septembre.  The reason I picked this painting is because it’s simple but yet it shows illusion.  Clearly this picture is representing nighttime however what is interesting about it is the position of the moon.  If we were actually standing in front of this tree looking at it we would be seeing the moon through the branches of the tree, and we would only see parts of the moon because the branches would be in the way of the full view.  However Magritte decides to place the moon in the top middle of the tree.  The illusion in this picture is the placement of the moon.  Clearly we would not be able to see the moon that perfectly unless there was some sort of hole in the tree.   

            One other painting of Magritte’s that I really like is Le Blanc-Seing.  This picture is a much more complex version of illusion.  The horse is seen walking through the woods however we all know a horse and person cannot walk through a tree so one would think to go around the tree.  However Magritte paints the picture of the horse and rider as if they are one with the tree.  Another way to look at it is to see the horse emerging or sneaking out from the forest/trees because there is a gap that connects the horses head and front part to the rest of its body. Looking at this photo just makes me want to sit and figure out how he drew this and to figure out the allusion because there are so many ways to look into this painting.