Rene Magritte

Students went on a field trip to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to see the Rene Magritte’s exhibition The Fifth Season. Students studied Magritte’s subject matter, concept, and painting style. They were encouraged to find elements that they liked with his work. They were to make work that was inspired by Rene Magritte which could be highly dimensional or have a smooth flat surface, depending on their idea. Technically the students were encouraged to take advantage of the clay and the glazes and embrace Magritte’s juxtaposition in subject matter.

It doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are for installation day, there will always be surprises. We had organized whose piece was going to go where and on which lamp post before installation day so all we would have to do is install the pieces around the lamp post but once we got to the lamp post we realized that some of the pieces would not fit over the lamp wiring cover plate so we had to reorganize everything. It is a real group spirit to try to change the plan and still not compromise the work of the artwork.

Childhood Experience: Rene Magritte questioned, “What is reality?” Part of this questioning came from an experience he had as a young boy. When he was 14 years old his mother committed suicide. She went down to the river down from their house and drowned herself. Magritte is certain he saw his mother’s body floating down the river but no one believes him because they said he was in bed that night the entire night. So a lot of Magritte’s work is questioning what is in fact real.

I liked the cloudscape in Magritte’s paintings and his ability of creating the mysterious out of commonplace objects and people. While his character is usually a man, I chose a woman in my project. The MAC Apple symbolizes the modern and changing world. The woman’s back on the other side of my cylinder was taken from a Magritte painting. While one might expect a face on the other side of the cylinder, I made a flower to reflect the unchanging roles of or views about women.

One of Rene Magritte’s paintings I chose as inspiration was “Personal Values”. I was interested in this painting for its odd proportions, yet they represented what items were most important during that time. I chose to mimic that idea with my piece by making a cell phone with Snapchat; due to the increase of value that’s been placed not only on our electronic devices but the way our peers perceive us as individuals. I also added a comb as a direct representation of Magritte’s painting and how we use forms of personal grooming to make ourselves up daily.