Magritte knew what all artists of our era have learned. If you want to make people think don’t write your ideas down… make those ideas visual. Otherwise, the masses will never see those ideas.
Wonderful video! Thank you. I don't know your name, so I will write: "Dear Magritte-o-phile, ......". I have been giving lectures about Magritte's art for the last 5 years and would love to talk with you about some of my ideas. I was haapy to hear you mention that Magritte thought of himself as a philosopher because so many of his works dive deep into philosophical territory. He was not interested in the Freudian-Surreal-dreamlike approach of Dali: for Magritte the Ordinary had plenty enough Mystery in it! When he 1st saw de Chirico's "Song of Love" (a black-and -white reporduction in a magazine, I believe), it brought him to tears and he vowed that from then on all his paintings would be visual poems. And he relished in creating "poetic shock", as in "La Clairvoyance". (by the way, everyone says "he looks at an egg but paints a bird" (e.g. Ann Umland, curator at MOMA said that in the audio tour); it turns out he is not looking at the egg! I did the experiment! His gaze is too high, by about 22 degrees! But no matter--the work conveys the potentialities of objects, refers to time passage, the surreality of tranformation (little round white object becomes hige bird!), and of course his imagination as well as ours that he enlists in pondering this work. ). In "La Condition Humain (1933)" , he delves deeply into philosophical territory about the nature of representation, about paradoxical spaces (inside is outside; opaque is tranparent...etc). And in fact he understood human perception as representation in the brain, a concept quite harmonious with modern neuroscientific thinking about how perception is instantiated in the brain. My lecures are titled "Surreal Artist as Neuroscientist: What the Art of Rene Magritte Tells Us About The Brain (and vice versa)". I'd love to talk with you about his work and the brain -lessons it contains. These apply to all art, but Magritte's works offer super-evocative clear examples of how art can reveal secrets about how the brain proecsses scenes. Please contact me at russhamer2ATgmailDOTcom.
