Essay about Le Faux Mirror: A Profile of René Magritte

Everyone wants to understand art.... In the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works out of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things, things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them (Barnes).

Some like Kenneth Dauber, who studied Poe’s work at a later date, believe Poe mostly wrote “stories written around a vacancy”. While in reality, Poe may not be a modern Pluto or a “failure” of a writer, the majority of people, despite their personal opinions, cannot argue that Poe is a writer that has much influence over his readers, often making them feel like characters in his own stories. Poe’s writing style is quite distinctive; he writes exactly how he wants you to feel, which is usually petrified or bewildered. If the sentences are short, the mood is apprehensive; longer sentences usually mean a calmer point in the twisted plot. In “The Tell-Tale Heart”, the narrator describes how he “cautiously- oh, so cautiously, cautiously” went about killing an old man, a person he said he “loved”, because his eye was bothering him. (Poe, 303) As the narrator describes how he “kept quiet and still for a whole hour [and] did not move a muscle”, the details make the reader tense up like he is the one about to commit the crime. Likewise Poe’s images about the pendulum in “The Pit and the Pendulum” are lifelike; one can almost see the “razor, tapering from the edge…that [was] perceptively [descending]” (Poe, 252).

"The meaning of a word - to me - is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have often been told what to paint. I am often amazed at the spoken and written word telling me what I have painted. I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen. Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."

To begin, we will look at the ideals and influences that led to the formation of surrealist ideals,

This excerpt is the first time the reader sees Stephen thinking through his painting, which is very important to his character development. It also highlights

Pieces always contained the unspoken linguistic element: “This painted image is that thing.” The purpose for each artwork was to display a recognizable scene and for each scene to be exactly what it resembled. For example, the famous painting called “The Last Supper” is exactly what is depicted; a religious scene narrating the life of Christ and his disciples. Yet with Magritte’s work, we find that he begins to explore the anti-linguistic program of Modernism where his paintings use literalism to undermine themselves. Toying with conventional thinking, he opens up a completely new door of modernism, one that defies reality and ultimately gives birth to surrealism. By disturbing the accustomed bond between language and image he is able to comprise a piece that detaches the painting of the pipe from the text directly below it “this is not a pipe,” and therefore verifying the

A painting is a complicated piece if one were to simply look at it with their eyes only. However, if an artist or someone who studies art studies it down to its last detail, they would realize it is a lot more simple than it appears to be. One example would have to be the Monroe Country House with Yellow Datura.

This also shows his academic interests. He continues to share is ability to be artistic in this paragraph when he says, “I was an artist, always had been, and I would paint in their style, in reds, oranges, and rusts, on the rocks by the creek-geometric designs.” He reflects on his artistic ability and lonely despair when he states, “I lived in the worlds that I drew. ”(Paragraph 17) and again in paragraph 22: “I had painted a great Aztec pyramid under only black storm clouds, with nine masque-hideous faces upon it, one face for each tier. The lighting was angry and hellish and read, and an uneasy orange fire burned in each masque-face’s eyes.

Surrealism was one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th Century. André Breton consolidated Surrealism as a movement in the early 1920s, trying to achieve the “total liberation of the mind and of all that resembles it[1]” through innovative and varied ideas. Surrealism deeply influenced the world in the era between the two world wars and played a big role in the diffusion and adoption of psychology worldwide. Surrealism faded after World War II, but its revolutionary genius has influenced every artistic movement ever since.

Sometimes words cannot exactly explain what we want to convey, so we need a visual to support it. A similar thing was observed in the article of Alan M. Dershowitz, he cleverly makes use of Ben Shah’s painting in the article to grab the attention of folks. The author writes about a murder case of a paymaster and a guard of the South Braintree by Sacco and Vanzetti, both were Italian immigrant anarchists. Surprisingly, the truth was not revealed that whether Sacco and Vanzetti were the killers and this case is still unsolved. I agree with the author that the trials could not get to the fair results. I believe that the painting is an ironic symbol of the justice. It silently expresses a lot what the text can’t. I think the painting adds words

The ingenuity of the composition is that it used a lot of tricks in the layout of the elements, meanwhile being rendered very simply and concisely. The artist realized that the eye does not settle naturally on the center of a painting and that

With a life marred by tragedy at the very young age of three with his parents death, thus leaving him an orphan, his works reveals his darkly passionate sensibilities—a tormented and sometimes neurotic obsession with death and violence and overall appreciation for the beautiful yet tragic mysteries of life. Poe’s creations illustrate a powerful faculty for both the technical and abstract beauty linked with an inveterate inclination toward nocturnal themes.

What is not clear and is the true mystery is what the artist is attempting to express. It brings me to the conclusion that it is our own personal beliefs, preconceptions, and experiences that drive what we identify as true and accurate in

was looking at the painting. I could sense a certain limit of my understanding due to the previous

I personally get a sense of perfection in a human world when I look at this painting, which is a bit misleading but appropriate for a time in which men were beginning to question the divine and finding answers in the natural world where science and mathematical solutions were starting to make sense of everything around us.