Me and Magritte -- Day 112

Walk: R/T Mindful Body
Distance: 8 blocks and teach yoga class

Don't have much to say today for some reason.



(After - not by - Magritte)

 To support himself the Belgium surrealist painter, Rene Francois Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) spent many years working as a commercial artist, producing advertising and book designs, and this likely shaped his fine art, which often has the abbreviated impact of an advertisement. While some French Surrealists led ostentatious lives, Magritte preferred the quiet anonymity of a middle-class existence, a life symbolized by the bowler-hatted men that often populate his pictures. In later years he was castigated by his peers for some of his strategies (such as his tendency to produce multiple copies of his pictures), yet since his death his reputation has only increased. Conceptual artists have admired his use of text in images, and painters in the 1980s admired the provocative kitsch of some of his later work...


The men in bowler hats that often appear in Magritte's pictures can be interpreted as self-portraits. Portrayals of the artist's wife, Georgette, are also common in his work, as are glimpses of the couple's modest Brussels apartment. Although this might suggest autobiographical content in Magritte's pictures, it more likely points to the commonplace sources of his inspiration. It is as if he believed that we need not look far for the mysterious, since it lurks everywhere in the most conventional of lives... 

Legacy:

Magritte's work had a major impact on a number of movements that followed his death, including Pop, Conceptualism, and the painting of the 1980s. In particular, his work was hailed as a harbinger of upcoming trends in art for its emphasis on concept over execution, its close association with commercial art, and its focus on everyday objects that were often repeated in pictorial space. It is easy to see why artists such as Andy Warhol, Martin Kippenberger, and Robert Gober cite Magritte as a profound influence. 

www.theartstory.org/artist-magritte-rene.htm