René François Ghislain Magritte (1898–1967) — an artist from Belgium, working in the artistic direction of surrealism, who painted many extraordinary pictures, but did not bother to explain their hidden meaning. However, this is only a joy for modern art critics - you can always engage in the interpretation of his canvases, often in a way that even Magritte himself did not suspect. The main character of Magritte's paintings is a man in a bowler hat, but without a face, according to many - this is Magritte himself. However, Magritte rejected surrealism and preferred to say that he painted pictures in the direction of magical realism. That is, his paintings are not pure invention, like some works of the great Salvador Dali, but a search for the strange, unusual and fantastic in our everyday reality, as Magritte himself imagined.
Rene Magritte. Self-portrait.
Magritte is a master of transformations, riddles, illusions, and unconventional solutions, which are reflected in his paintings. But in everyday life, he was a very ordinary person, lived in a completely ordinary house, painted in his dining room, trying not to stain the floor with paint, which he always did very well, since he was very neat. And in the creative process of Rene Magritte, unlike the frantic Joseph Turner, there was nothing unusual. But he realized all his love for the unusual in his canvases - they are certainly talented, but very strange, and the spectacular puzzles captured in them still haunt many art critics and ordinary viewers. By and large, Magritte's paintings are a test of abstract and unconventional thinking, they, like much modern art, are not always understandable to everyone, but their unconventionality and the artist's creative approach cannot be denied.
The Lost Jockey
René Magritte was born in the small town of Lessines to a completely ordinary family - his father worked as a tailor and sold fabrics, his mother was a milliner. Everything was going quite normally and peacefully, but in March 1912, when René was 13 years old, his mother left home in just a nightgown and never returned. Some time later, it turned out that she had thrown herself into the local river Sambre, her body washed up on the shore, and her nightgown was wrapped around her head. René must have seen all this, and such a picture was remembered by him for the rest of his life, and its echoes were reflected in his paintings "Lovers", "The Invention of Life" and "Song of Love".
The invention of life - Rene Magritte
The first two, painted in 1928, have their faces covered by canvas, while "The Song of Love", dating from 1948, depicts mermaids in reverse, with human legs and fish heads.
The song of love
Perhaps, already in adulthood, Rene sketched his teenage nightmares, reinterpreted them into similar images, and these paintings were needed more by the artist himself, in order to express on canvas everything that he felt on that March day in 1912 on the bank of that very river and somehow come to terms with it, to calm and ease the mental pain.
The Lovers
However, Magritte himself always said that this accident did not make a serious impression on him, and he was even somewhat happy about it - finally his family became local celebrities, and they would be talked about throughout the entire area. And in general, there were many other incidents in his childhood, and they contributed to his formation as an artist. But which ones exactly - Magritte was silent. And it is hard to believe in the sincerity of his words - any normal person, and Magritte was still relatively normal, there is no evidence of his mental illness, as, for example, Mikhail Vrubel or Pavel Fedotov would hardly take the death of his mother calmly.
Golconda
Shortly after the accident, René met Georgette Berger, a 13-year-old butcher's daughter, and they were practically inseparable. During their walk together, René saw an artist painting outdoors with an easel and brush. René was fascinated - he had never seen a painter at work before, he seemed to him like a creature from another world, inaccessible and alluring. It was then that he decided to become an artist.
Georgette Magritte
Soon the girl's parents moved to Brussels, and a few years later Renée would go to the same city to study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Eight years after their separation, they accidentally met on the street. As it turned out, their youthful love had not gone away, it had simply cooled for a while, and when they met, it flared up again. René and Georgette decided to get married, but before that he had to serve in the army. Finally, in 1922, the wedding took place and they lived together their entire lives, quite happily.
Rene Magritte & Georgette Berger
However, in 1936, Rene began an affair with surrealist artist Sheila Legg. Georgette also did not remain in debt and began dating the artist Paul Colinet, who was a friend of Rene Magritte. Only four years later, Rene and Georgette began living together again, the crisis of marital relations and middle age passed, and everything returned to normal.
Then everything went back to normal - Rene painted pictures, as he went to work - strictly on the clock, taking a mandatory break for lunch. For many other artists, in a fit of creative inspiration, forgetting about food and sleep, such behavior, to put it mildly, was surprising, but such was Magritte, nothing could change his lifestyle of a respectable bourgeois.
The main character of many of Magritte's paintings is a man in a bowler hat, whose face is not visible. It may simply not be drawn, leaving the bowler hat hanging in the air or obscured by a dove flying in the foreground.
Man in a bowler hat. 1964
And often the person is turned with his back to us, which further enhances the overall mystery of Magritte's paintings. Like a clever magician, Magritte shows the viewers only what he himself wants, leaving a lot of food for thought, as, for example, in the painting "Reflection of a Lonely Passerby" painted in 1926.
The musings of the solitary walker
Surely, if Magritte had not become an artist, he would have made a good magician, at least the craving for all sorts of illusions is clearly visible in his paintings.
He began to paint his paintings in the artistic direction of surrealism in the 1920s, after meeting the French surrealists, in particular, Andre Breton. Subsequently, he quarreled with them, but decided not to give up the active use of various optical illusions, as, for example, in the painting "The Return of the Flame".
The return of the flame
Then came the paintings that made him famous: “The Son of Man”, “Golconda” and many others.
The Son of Man
Magritte died at the age of 68, having lived a completely ordinary life, and having painted absolutely extraordinary paintings. Perhaps this is the main trick of Rene Magritte.
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