René Magritte - The Man of Contradictions

The Human Condition by René Magritte (1933) (Image from https://www.nga.gov/artworks/70170-la-condition-humaine)

‘This is how we see the world. We see it outside ourselves, and at the same time we only have a representation of it in ourselves. In the same way, we sometimes situate in the past that which is happening in the present. Time and space thus lose the vulgar meaning and our daily experience becomes paramount.’

In the same way the view in René Magritte’s Human Condition is both inside a room and outside in nature, his persona as a Surrealist and antifascist is also as such – a complex tapestry of layers upon layers of contradictions. While his art grapples at appearance versus reality, Magritte himself was a man defined by paradox – prompting the question: was it Magritte himself, or his bourgeois appearance, that was seen by the public?

Born in Lessines, Belgium in 1898, Magritte resembled the appearance of a typical member of the Belgian bourgeoisie who was conventional and complacent. Yet his words, art, and speeches begged to differ: presenting a completely different man than as perceived by his appearance. Through all his actions there remained one constant: a strong, infectious desire to challenge and reshape social norms, to push anyone who would listen to question what they assume, and to have a mind of their own. This guise was Magritte’s signature – both as a human being and an artist; masquerading under the respectable class while functioning as a revolutionary behind the mask.

The Treachery of Images by René Magritee (1929) (Image from https://www.renemagritte.org/the-treachery-of-images.jsp)

The Surrealist began his career with early influences from the Cubists and Futurists. He, however, quickly changed course – trailblazing a unique approach that emphasised a juxtaposition between the realistic and the puzzling. As opposed to his Surrealist peers, such as the saturated flamboyance of the eccentric Salvador Dalí, Magritte employed a restrained palette and retained an illustrative visual motif, proving that artistic and conceptual greatness lied in subtlety. This same subtlety evoked mystery and paradox, forcing the audience to confront the limits of our own representations. This is seen through works such as The Treachery of Images, underlining how what we perceive in art is simply color on a canvas, and a mere representation of some tangible form of reality. The depiction is not a pipe – it is the image of a pipe, or it is not a pipe at all. Reality eludes all forms of capture – perhaps then it is this same philosophy that rendered Magritte an enigma to his peers.

His ideological beliefs further exacerbated these contradictions. After the Second World War, he joined the Belgian Communist Party and overtly critiqued bourgeois society - despite his bourgeois appearance. In his own words ‘The only way that poets and painters can fight against the bourgeois economy is to give their works precisely that content which challenges the bourgeois ideological values propping up the bourgeois economy’. He envisioned to dismantle bourgeois rationalism by remaining in its structure while simultaneously exposing its ridiculousness. Patriots and priests weren’t safe from his cutthroat criticism either, whom he publicly accused of hypocrisy. Yet the contradiction remained: his tone and rhetoric implicated almost, that it was not the bourgeoisie, the patriots or the priests he was really criticizing – but the reader and himself, blurring the fine line between the extrospective and introspective 

The Son of Man by René Magritte (1964) (Image from https://www.riseart.com/article/2699/masterpiece-in-the-spotlight-the-son-of-man-magritte)

Postmortem, Magritte and his Marxist philosophy would be remembered as ironic, even humorous: his artworks become pricey and competitive commodities in the same capitalist market he sought to take down, effectively rendering him the metonym of the bourgeoisie of this century. Perhaps the apple has been taken away, and this is the true René Magritte we understand in this day and age: a past Surrealist famed for his provocative paintings. Or perhaps the apple is covering more of his visage than ever before as Magritte continues to influence our lives in elusive yet significant ways, permeating art, popular culture and advertising to show, or not show, that he is a puzzle that resists resolution.