The False Mirror - Grade: 100 PDF

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Summary

Essay about René Magritte and his artwork, predominately about 'The False Mirror' and what it represents. ...

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Professor Yoon ART 1841.21 09.24.2020 The False Mirror I chose to recreate The False Mirror by Rene Magritte. Rene Magritte was a Belgian painter and popular surrealist. He began his career as a graphic artist and quasi-abstract painter. However, his work changed in 1926 when he started to reinvent himself as a figurative artist. A notable development of Magritte’s time in Paris (1927) was his word-paintings. He explored the relationship between image and text and often broke apart well-worn connections between the two. He used painting as a critical tool that could challenge perception and engage the viewer’s mind. With The False Mirror, Rene Magritte posed a question about observation. The eye looks at the viewer, while the viewer looks both at and into the eye, as through a window, becoming both the observed and the observer and blurring the line between the two. No one truly knows the meaning behind Rene Magritte’s The False Mirror. It could be about a clear mind, daydreaming, or even emptiness. However, Magritte managed to create art that questioned the viewer’s perception of reality itself, “The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.” The False Mirror challenged my perception, as I always felt that eyes are the window to the soul. I believe that you can understand a person’s emotions and thoughts by looking into their

eyes. I watched people and how their eyes changed with a different emotion, and how emotion can be conveyed through the eyes without a single word. The eye as a symbol has been around almost as long as man has been drawing. Many different cultures and societies incorporated the eye as a symbol of providence, knowledge, and divine direction. The eye is a powerful symbol that represents not only the search for wisdom but as well as the need for protection from a higher power that watches from above. Most of my artwork contains eyes, such as the eye of Horus, the evil eye, and the hamsa. I always perceive it as foresight and protection. However, with The False Mirror, it was hard for me to perceive the eye as anything other than a jet-black pupil in the middle of a sky dotted with clouds. The eye is not in its usual context, it is presented without a face to which it belongs. I saw this as Rene Magritte challenging the viewers to question what we see and what we think we know. I asked myself questions such as, “Is the sky a reflection of what the eye is seeing, or is this eye-opening into another reality?” Rene Magritte touched the unconscious minds of his viewers by undermining our basic assumptions. Even though we might never know the true meaning behind The False Mirror, it is Magritte’s invitation to look at the world differently....