Last Artist of School Year!
 

 (Calendar at end of post!)
 

Magritte is 32 years old here - this is near the time when he moved back to Brussels,

Belgium (his native country) after living with his wife, Georgette, in Paris for three years.

He become friends with many other Surrealist artists there in Brussels.

The picture above on the left is Magritte at age 32 years old - this is near the time when he moved back to Brussels, Belgium (his native country) after living with his wife, Georgette, in Paris for three years.
He become friends with many other Surrealist artists there in Paris.
The Painting on the Right is called, The Magician, 1951. Magritte wrote to a friend that this painting was a self-portrait. It is one of Magritte's few

self-portraits showing him able to carry on many things at the same time - using four

hands and arms at that! Many of his paintings attempt to show the impossible.

 

 

LeJockev Perdu (The LostJockev).1926

The Jockey is one of Magritte's first surrealist paintings in which he rearranged familiar

objects in a new and mysterious way. Needless to say, his first exhibit received much

criticism. What appears strange to you in this painting?

  The Treachery of Images. 1928-29

One of Magritte's much talked about works. In Magritte's art the painted image is always

the image of a thought; it is never a simple reproduction of appearances intended to

represent reality. The French text on the painting says: "This is not a pipe."

 

The False Mirror. 1928

Can you see any similarities between Magritte's image of the eye and the CBS logo?

What influence do you think the sky has on the viewer (a dreamlike feel)? You will notice the sky repeated in many of Magritte's works. As with the CBS logo, if we were to look at some forms of advertisements we would find a Surrealistic approach – cloudy blue sky in the background, and /or objects in unexpected places.

  The Human Condition. 1933

Here you will notice his signature cloudy blue sky, but what else has Magritte done? He has created a painting which portrays both a window view and a painting on an easel which share the same scenery. Can you tell where painting on the easel starts and stops, and which is part is the window scenery?

 

The Spirit of Geometry. 1935, Picture on the Left

Much of Magritte's art was inspired by the collage technique and explores what happens when ordinary things are reversed or moved around in some way. This is known as dislocation - the removal of an object from its normal place or context and its introduction into an unfamiliar environment. What do you notice about this painting which seems out of character or abnormal? The baby's head is enlarged to

an adult size and attached to the mother's body while the mother's head is reduced to the size of an infant and attached to the baby's body - a reversal.

The Therapist. 1937, on the right

This is an example of many of his works which depict unexpected combination of things:
the lower body of a sitting man with a birdcage on top of it. The airy and hollow
birdcage seems to contrast with the solid and full legs. Would you expect to see a man
without a face and a bird cage for his torso?

 

Time Transfixed. 1938

The artist said that all he wanted to accomplish in this picture was to paint a locomotive

"So that it would evoke mystery." As you can see, to do that he joined the locomotive with something completely unrelated - a dining room fireplace. Notice how the scale of the locomotive is out of all proportion.

 

 

 

Personal Values, 1951-52

All of the objects in this room are realistically depicted, and are clearly recognizable

(Objects which you may have in your home), however what does not seem right to you?

Correct - their size. Maybe we are looking into a doll house where someone has put a normal size comb, shaving brush, bar of soap and wine glass. The wallpaper, however, with Magritte's signature sky and clouds seems to make it very large and spacious.

Because of this alteration with the scale of things, everything is plunged into uncertainty.

 

The Listening Room. 1952

Here we are confronted with a realistically depicted room yet it has a huge apple inside it (the view from the window tell us that this is not a doll's house). The apple is so realistically depicted, but it is so large that it seems threatening - crowding us out from the room.

The Son of Man. 1964

This is a popular image of a gentleman with a boiler hat, but his face is concealed by an apple - notice the background. Magritte painted this as a self-portrait. His words to describe it were. "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...."

 

Pumpkin Head

This image was included to show you how sometimes famous original works of art are sometimes reproduced in altered forms. What would you use in place of the apple?

 

Project will be a surrealist collage

(Objects in places you would not expect them)

 

Rene Magritte described his paints saying, "My painting is 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"

 

Born Nov. 21, 1898, Lessines, Belgian. After studying at the Belgian Academy of Fine Arts (1916 -1918), he designed wallpaper and did advertising sketches until the support of a Brussels art gallery enabled him to become a full-time painter. In 1922 he discovered and embraced Surrealism. Certain images appear over and over again in Magritte's works - the sea, wide skies, the bourgeois "little man" in a bowler hag rocks that hover overhead and dislocations of space, time, and scale were common elements in his enigmatic and illogical paintings. The fantastic content of his art had great appeal for the general public and became widely disseminated in commercial advertising and posters in the 1960s and 1970s. Magritte, who died in Brussels on August 15, 1967, created a word of enchantment with far-reaching influences.
 



 Tigard Library will have Templeton's art displayed!!   Then, copies also will go up at New Season's market in June! It is so wonderful to see all the wonderful talented artists in our School!