Definition+of+Surrealism+and+Rene+Margritte's+work

Among Magritte's works are a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Elsewhere, Magritte challenges the difficulty of artwork to convey meaning with a recurring motif of an easel, as in his //The Human Condition// series (1933, 1935) or //The Promenades of Euclid// (1955) (wherein the spires of a castle are "painted" upon the ordinary streets which the canvas overlooks). In a letter to André Breton, he wrote of //The Human Condition// that it was irrelevant if the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, "but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room." [10] The windows in some of these pictures are framed with heavy drapes, suggesting a theatrical motif. [11]   Magritte's style of surrealism is more representational than the [|"automatic"] style of artists such as [|Joan Miró]. Magritte's use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He described the act of painting as "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects—the sky, people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti—become united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry of this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new.” [12]   René Magritte described his as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable." [13]  Magritte's constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother. Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have said that Magritte's back and forth play with reality and reflects his "constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—'mother is alive'—to what he knows—'mother is dead' ". [14]

Two works: