Aside from Salvador Dali, the best known Surrealist artist is probably René Magritte. Magritte was born a few years before Dali, and he died much earlier, but his images―coolly off―have never been forgotten. The world has further changed since he last painted, but he still speaks to many.
In some ways, "The Reckless Sleeper" (above) is a pretty straightforward depiction of sleep and dreams. A man lies sleeping in some kind of bunk. Below him is the subconscious. The objects therein are randomly selected, but he will assemble them into the story of his dream tonight.
Well, sort of randomly selected. There's an apple and a bowler hat, both famous components of Magritte's other works. So there's an author's signature here.
2 comments:
I'm most definitely among those still listening to Magritte. 'The Reckless Sleeper' is one I'm less familiar with although its imagery is clearly reminiscent of how our dreams are conceived in our unconscious.
His work is generally more subtle than Dali's. Dali was something of a bombastic showman, an artist praised by promoters who indulged everything he did largely because it was weird. There are contemporary artists whose pieces I don't like much either, also mostly because I see pretension in their works - ie, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. Anyway, I do like Dali's watercolors.
Magritte's 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' is a masterpiece of how he viewed paradox in the world. It's hard to choose favorites among his works as there are so many excellent and intriguing ones. Nevertheless, the ones I return to are those like 'The Human Condition', the one that shows an easel in front of an open window where the image appears interchangeable with the outside. I've often wondered what if there's something else in that meadow other than a tree and more bushes?
Magritte was responsible for a good many unforgettable images. For whatever reason, this one spoke to me at the time I wrote this blog post. And it still does.
It's interesting. I got really into Dali when I was a teenager. He was still around then. He outlived Andy Warhol by a couple of years. Anyway, he seemed like the ultimate to me back then. I wouldn't say that I stopped liking him. Much of his work I still enjoy. But I have gained an appreciation for more subtle artists. As for Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, I don't begrudge them their success but I don't see a lot of substance there either. A lot of Dali's watercolors come from later in his career, 1960s onward. I think he might have done them to get out of a rut.
Oh yeah, "The Treachery of Images." The pipe in that painting is if anything a little too perfect, which underlines his point. "The Human Condition" just sent me down a little rabbit hole. Apparently Magritte did four paintings of that name. In one of them, found in Norwich Castle, the painting is in front of a cave opening instead of a window. They're all quite lovely.
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