René Magritte :: essays research papers

Ren MagritteRen Magritte was born in Belgium on November 21, 1898. His childhood took slip in Charlerloi. He was born to poverty and held left-wing political views. Magrittes mother killed herself when he was only fourteen. He later joined the commie Party. However, he preferred not to use his art for political causes. Magritte started to make believe successful oil paintings in the 1920s. This is when Magritte started to come into his own. In 1922, Magritte got married to Georgette Berger. Magritte was stir by Georgette and she became his model. He also became friendly with Victor Servranckx, who had developed a very geometric-abstract style. This was the beginning of a new direction for Magritte. In 1927 Magritte and Georgette travel to Paris to be closer to where it all happens. He started to take depart in the activities of the Surrealists, which became his style of choice for the majority of his life. Magritte began combining words and images in his paintings. These word-pi ctures were not mere illustrations of an object or a purpose. Just the opposite, his fail was intended to gently destabilize our mental habits of representation. Magritte elaborated a didactic classification of this type of painting, the simplest which consisted of denying an images with words, or vice versa. Magritte shared the Surrealist concept of the power of desire and eroticism to change life and wanted to take this idea through unconventional images. He continued involving metamorphosis in his work. In Black Magic, a naked woman leaning on a rock gradually merges into the blue sky. The painter was, nevertheless, distrustful of the obvious seduction of beautiful colors. In The Rape he even pushed it to the bloom of obsession with the features of a womans face replaced by sexual attributes, such as breasts, a belly button and pubic hair..In 1940, Magritte was going through a crisis resulting from the German occupation in World War II. Also, at this point Magrittes financ ial situation became an issue and his dissatisfaction with his own paintings. From past on, he decided that a feeling of pleasure and an atmosphere of rejoicing had to predominate over the sense of anxiety. Magritte first thought about changing his iconography and began to paint the leaf-birds, which are seen in two works from 1942, Treasure Island and The Companions of Fear.