I find the execution of this painting formidable. Magritte reveled in such contradictions because they confronted viewers with two incompatible manifestations, forcing viewers to face this contradiction and reflect upon it (see also our article on Hegel’s Holiday).Īs we will see, this has very much in common with the story of the novel on the mantelpiece, which, in my opinion, plays a much central role in the meaning of the painting than most analyses I read appear to suggest. ![]() It is probably a reflection, suggesting that the room in which the man is in is mostly empty.Īn interesting aspect of this painting is that even though the man’s reflection is clearly impossible within our physical world, there are other elements that mimic reality as we know it (e.g., the correct reflection of the book in the mirror). Contrary to the man’s reflection, the reflection of the book in the mirror is correct.īehind the reflection of the man we see a bland brown/dark orange wall, which takes up about half the painting. The man depicted is likely British poet Edward James, who commissioned the work from Magritte.Ī French copy of the book The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Les aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym) by Edgar Allan Poe is visible on the mantelpiece on the lower right corner. Contrary to our expectation, the image in the mirror shows the reflection of the man’s back, as opposed to the frontal part of his body and his face. It shows a man standing and looking into a mirror. Was it Magrittes goal to question the anatomy of an eye? The lack of eye lashes on the eye is also questionable.Not to Be Reproduced (original title: La reproduction interdite) is a 1937 oil painting by Belgium artist René Magritte. In a sense, everything we see is mirrored back to us through our eyes which justifies the title of the work Magritte produced, “The False Mirror.”Ī question I have is why Magritte chose to depict the eye this way. Using the inference of not being what it actually is helps with interpreting this painting while it is an eye, it is not really an eye but what the eye sees. It reminded me of Magrittes painting of the pipe we had seen in class where it was technically not a pipe, but a painting of a pipe. To me it signified the difference between what we actually see and how we interpret it differently. Normally, you wouldn’t expect to see what the eye is viewing, but Magritte captures this perspective and puts it into art depicting both the instrument (eye) and the view (sky) into a single frame. What caught my attention regarding this painting was the reflection seen in the eye, which is the main attraction of the painting and a focal point of confusion. The aesthetics of the work are imaginary and creative which is depicted through an eye representing a mirror of the sky. What Magritte shows through imagination and experimentation is unique to everyday life as it breaks the fundamental art style of realism. The intention is to show more of the unconscious mind as opposed to the conscious and rational side of thinking. In relation to modernism, the aspect being shown in this artwork is surrealism. Overall, the description of the artwork is straight forward with what you see, but it can be interpreted in many ways. A small detail that is easily missed during the first glance is the lack of eyelashes which gets overlooked by the depiction of the sky. ![]() The work I selected is a picture of an entire eye, including the eyelids, with a view of the beautiful sky as its iris which is briefly interrupted by a solid black circle as the pupil. Rene Magritte was a Belgian painter who followed the surrealism movement of art, in this movement a common theme majority of his artwork share was the sense for viewers of his artwork to “question their perceptions of reality.” The work was created on 1928 at Le Perreux-sur-Marne which is a small suburb in Paris, France and was called “Le Faux Miroir”. ![]() During my visit to the Museum of Modern Art, one artwork that stood out and caught my interest was “The False Mirror” by Rene Magritte.
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