“Nothing is confused, except the mind.”
– René Magritte
Sometimes a movie is just a movie, a poem is just a poem and a pipe is not a pipe, but an illustration of a pipe in a painting. It is not everything that requires to be analysed but rather to simply be felt. Not to be questioned based on logic but seen just to see because it exists just because. This is something one of the most prominent surrealist artists René Magritte (1898-1967) repeatedly insisted on. A man who ironically made art that never failed to tickle the human mind.
René Magritte – Not a Painter
René Magritte was born in 1898 in Lessines, Belgium. The artist’s love for painting showed early on in his life at the age of 12 years old – just a year before he was struck by a tragedy. At the age of 13, Magritte witnessed the death of his mother who committed suicide by drowning in a lake near their house; an event that shifted something in him.
It is also believed to have went on to show further in some of his paintings like The Heart of the Matter (1928) where the woman covered by a sheet is believed to be his mother, whose body was found with her face covered with a cloth, and The Musings of the Solitary Walker (1926) where the dead body supposedly signifies his mother. Although these are not direct indications towards his mother, and Magritte stands against the armchair analysis so let us not keep any room for assumptions.
As Magritte grew up, he took on the job of a designer for advertisements at a wallpaper factory, before discovering what suited him the best. He explored several art styles like Impressionism and analytical Cubism but the art critics in Belgium were not a big fan of his early works so he decided to move to Paris to establish a name for himself. There he quickly became a part of the French surrealist group with some of the biggest names such as Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Man Ray, etc.
Every surrealist painter of the time had the motive of hiding an in-depth meaning behind their paintings. Magritte on the other hand was not interested in any Freudian analysis of his works. In fact, he did not even consider himself a painter, but rather a philosopher who, through the medium of his paintings, conveyed his beautifully strange ideas and pushed the viewers to question their own beliefs. His motive was simply to give shape to thought.
Since Magritte himself preferred to be seen as a philosopher than a painter, we see that his painting style was also neat and plain. There was less focus on having a unique painting style and more on delivering an idea. It is more clean and straightforward so that the eyes of the viewer go straight to the thought and not be attracted to an unusual painting style. It is like taking the help of the simplest of words to convey seemingly the most complex philosophy.
Veiled Lovers
A look at Magritte’s Lovers II (1928) is simple, two lovers embrace each other with their faces hidden. They are as close as they could be but are not really touching – and Magritte has given a shape and form to this distance between them. Instead of delving into a deeper analysis of the painting, how about we look at it for what it is. The two lovers have their faces covered by different pieces of cloth. Both have something veiled from one another as well as from the viewer. And that something is where Magritte leaves room for curiosity in the viewer’s mind.
A kiss is the first step of passion and sheer desire for the other. This step is always pure and tender. The white colour of the sheet indicates this purity and plain desire over the complexity of human emotions. When these two reach out for the kiss, they put a veil over all the emotional complexity they come with and wear pure innocence for each other.
However, one cannot deny that this veil is indeed a visible distance between them which raises many questions like – does Magritte want to portray that this is the closest one can get to their love? Does the veil indicate love itself – which will eventually slip away and expose the real faces of these people to each other as the fog of desire settles? One can only w(a/o)nder in the world of Magritte.
Seeing the Evident
The way I see it, Magritte paints the unseeable. Be it a feeling or something that does not exist but will in the future. He gives form to something that has always existed in our minds but we fail to give them words. They are so simple and right in front of our eyes but we do not think of them because the mind always goes straight to complicating things instead of simplifying them.
Clairvoyance (1936) by Magritte is one of the best examples of the ability to see the unseeable and the evident. In the painting, we see the self portrait of Magritte painting a bird with its wings stretched wide open in attempts to soar. What plays with the mind is that he paints this bird while looking at an egg. The name fits very well – clairvoyant, as Magritte predicts the future of the egg. The painting is optimistic. It shows belief of one being on another before it even gains consciousness and sees its abilities.
The fate of an egg is fragile. The chances of it seeing the light of the day are bleak but Magritte decided to look at the brighter side and create what it should look like in the future. Another work of Magritte that shows the evident is Elective Affinities (1932) which shows a huge egg locked in a cage. With this one, Magritte chooses the pessimistic route.
Instead of showing a bird in a cage, he shows the future of the egg in its present – confined in a small space, with the knowledge that when it hatches, its wings will be of no use. Hence, it might as well prepare itself for what is to come even before it comes to life. This painting could be a question of the powers of humans who give themselves the importance of deciding the fate of another being, that Magritte captures so plainly. Simply genius.
Larger than life
Magritte as an artist never confined himself to this world – the one that we see and consider ‘normal’. It is by going beyond it that he unlocks an unknown dimension whose beauty lies in its inexplicability. When one surpasses logic, he reaches a point where his other senses are finally at work. When the realm of senses is closed, the very essence of observing an artwork is lost – that is the door that Magritte always strived to keep open in his works.
An excellent example of seeing what is larger than life is his painting The Domain of Arnheim (1962) painted towards the end of his life. The painting takes inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Domain of Arnheim (1847) that revolves around a wealthy individual named Ellison turning to nature in pursuit of something larger than life – the beauty, the grandeur and the very majestic existence of something around him that moves him.
The painting shows a grand mountain in the shape of a bird, dominating the entire frame as it looks after a nest. The bird-shaped mountain is so grand that it is almost frightening. But it also gives a sense of protection and relief that a larger existence surrounds the eggs that cannot look after themselves. It makes us conscious of the existence of something that births us but we often tend to forget.
It also sends shivers down the spine at the realisation that, much like the human condition explored in the story, the eggs exist alone and vulnerable in the world. The very protective bird-mountain appears as a predator in this sense. This paradox shows the two sides of nature – the good and the ugly.
Magritte remains to this day one of the most intriguing artists of all time – all thanks to him for remaining adamant on not seeking an in-depth meaning in his paintings. It is because of this that he was able to break the barrier into this whole other world where he could bring out the evident that is invisible to the complex human brain. He not only challenges one’s ability to think in the simplest manner but also provides the eyes to experience the real that feels surreal.
