René Magritte's artist life
It was since 1898 that Rene Magritte was breathing. At an early age, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself and by being present during the time they were pulling her out of the river, the image of his mother floating, dress obscuring her face was particularly noticeable in his amant series. After his marriage to Georgette Berger, Magritte worked in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926 when a contract with Galerie la Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. 
He then, in 1926 produced his first surrealist painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu) (on your right), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Surrealists are artists who explore the meanings of dreams or our unconscious mind. The main way surrealist artists created their work was to use the "Paranoiac Critical". This allowed them travel to an alternate place, and wander across their empty canvas. Those creations were very different from the typical artists. These paintings seemed strange to a large audience which resulted in very negative critics about the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, Rene moved to Paris and became involved in the surrealist group. Magritte did attempt to change his style, experimenting in the late 1940s. From 1945 to 1947 he turned to something similar to fauvism. His friends called the paintings "vache" which means "cowlike" or crude, so this became known as his "cow period". Magritte's paintings were comical, ironic of the French fauvist style. It is not surprising he wished to lighten his mood in the dark period after the Second World War.
He then, in 1926 produced his first surrealist painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu) (on your right), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Surrealists are artists who explore the meanings of dreams or our unconscious mind. The main way surrealist artists created their work was to use the "Paranoiac Critical". This allowed them travel to an alternate place, and wander across their empty canvas. Those creations were very different from the typical artists. These paintings seemed strange to a large audience which resulted in very negative critics about the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, Rene moved to Paris and became involved in the surrealist group. Magritte did attempt to change his style, experimenting in the late 1940s. From 1945 to 1947 he turned to something similar to fauvism. His friends called the paintings "vache" which means "cowlike" or crude, so this became known as his "cow period". Magritte's paintings were comical, ironic of the French fauvist style. It is not surprising he wished to lighten his mood in the dark period after the Second World War. Philosophical and artistic gestures
A accomplished technician, his art frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects, or an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things, not always understood by people surrounding him. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, 
The Treachery Of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, This is not a pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) (on your left), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. (In his book, This Is Not a Pipe, French critic Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox.) Note that Magritte pulled the same "stunt" in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit realistically and then used an "internal" caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. It might be true that Magritte's point in these Ceci n'est pas works is that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself. But that interpretation trivializes Magritte's insight -- for it is true of any painting, and every artist and child would admit it, that what the painting does is only present an image of a thing, and the thing itself is not on or in the canvas. It might be more plausible to interpret Magritte as commenting on Freudian psychoanalysis, a topic not very far removed from many of his surrealistic works. Sigmund Freud, especially in his dream analysis, continually asserted that what clearly and obviously seemed to be an X in a dream was not really an X, that it was an X only patently, on the surface, but not latently or deeply, that the X in the dream represented or was a metaphor for some other thing, Y. The dream-image train is really a penis, for example. So when Magritte says, "This is not a pipe," what he means is that it may be possible to think that it is only an image that stands for something else, that the phenomenal reality of the pipe obscures or hides the true reality lying underneath. It is also a way of making us try to understand something the artist wanted to make us see threw the realist object he painted, it is a way to make us think in a way. The difficult question, if we go this far, is whether Magritte intended to provide support for or to illustrate sympathetically Freudian dream analysis -- the treachery of dreams -- or, instead, was mocking it: "You mean this image, which is obviously a pipe-image, is not really a pipe-image? Tell me another!" His art shows a more representational style of surrealism compared to the "automatic" style seen in works by artists like Joan Miro addition to fantastic elements, his work is often witty and amusing. He also created a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Rene Magritte described his paintings by saying, "My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable".
The Treachery Of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, This is not a pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) (on your left), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. (In his book, This Is Not a Pipe, French critic Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox.) Note that Magritte pulled the same "stunt" in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit realistically and then used an "internal" caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. It might be true that Magritte's point in these Ceci n'est pas works is that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself. But that interpretation trivializes Magritte's insight -- for it is true of any painting, and every artist and child would admit it, that what the painting does is only present an image of a thing, and the thing itself is not on or in the canvas. It might be more plausible to interpret Magritte as commenting on Freudian psychoanalysis, a topic not very far removed from many of his surrealistic works. Sigmund Freud, especially in his dream analysis, continually asserted that what clearly and obviously seemed to be an X in a dream was not really an X, that it was an X only patently, on the surface, but not latently or deeply, that the X in the dream represented or was a metaphor for some other thing, Y. The dream-image train is really a penis, for example. So when Magritte says, "This is not a pipe," what he means is that it may be possible to think that it is only an image that stands for something else, that the phenomenal reality of the pipe obscures or hides the true reality lying underneath. It is also a way of making us try to understand something the artist wanted to make us see threw the realist object he painted, it is a way to make us think in a way. The difficult question, if we go this far, is whether Magritte intended to provide support for or to illustrate sympathetically Freudian dream analysis -- the treachery of dreams -- or, instead, was mocking it: "You mean this image, which is obviously a pipe-image, is not really a pipe-image? Tell me another!" His art shows a more representational style of surrealism compared to the "automatic" style seen in works by artists like Joan Miro addition to fantastic elements, his work is often witty and amusing. He also created a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Rene Magritte described his paintings by saying, "My painting is visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable". 
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