Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte was a Surrealist painter who was born in Belgium on November 12, 1898 (about 114 years ago). He was the older of two boys in his family. Magritte always loved to paint and his parents encouraged him to do so. In 1916 at the age of 18 he went to an art school in Brussels to study art. While there, he worked to find his own style. He tried a few different styles and ended up painting in the Surrealist style.

Surrealist style is where pictures from your mind and imagination are painted onto the canvas without any real logic to why or where they are on the page. He wanted people to look at ordinary things in different ways.

Magritte was married in 1922 to his childhood sweetheart.  In the beginning of their life together he designed wallpaper and posters in order to make enough money to live, although most of his time was spent doing what he loved which was paint.

In the beginning of his life as an artist most critics did not like his work because it always left them asking, “why?” It wasn’t until later in his life that people began to appreciate the full meaning of his paintings and the imagination he put behind each. 

Magritte died there in 1967 at the age of 68. He had created over 1000 paintings.

Show Artwork:

Time Transfixed

• Oil on canvas
• 1938
• 4.5 ft x 3.5 feet
• Edward James of London paid for this to be hung in his ballroom
• why is the train coming out of the fireplace? Why doesn’t the far candlestick reflect in the mirror? why did he choose to paint these things together?)
• what colors did he use? Is there any shading?
  

The False Mirror

•  
• Oil on canvas
• 1928
• 2 x 3 feet
• What do you notice about the painting? Why is it called, “The False Mirror?”

The Son of Man

• Oil on canvas
• 1964
• 4 x 3 feet
• What do you see in the painting? What seems strange? What do these strange things mean?
• This is what Magritte said about this painting:

“At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us.”

 

Project:

What you need:

· Old DVD or CD

· Colored Pencils

· Blank white paper

· Black markers

Step-1- Demonstrate  how to trace the CD in the center of the paper to make a human eye. Add lines to turn it into an eye including eye lashes. Color over these lines with a black marker.

Step-2-  Draw an image inside the eye which reflects something you like to look at. This can be anything BUT the drawing of the inside of an eye. To add interest to your composition you can put in something that doesn’t really belong. You may want to draw with pencil first and then color it in with colored pencils.

Step-3- Pass out CD’s, colored pencils (some students may have their own they’d like to use), white paper, and black markers

 

Step-4- Sign it with your name on the front

 

The following is a student example of the finished project