Of all the artistic movements of the 20th century whose content and style seem most designed to baffle viewers, surrealism ranks pretty much toward the top. And few surrealists had as great an effect on art, and on our image of surrealism, as did Belgian painter Rene Magritte.
Magritte was born in Lessines, Belgium in November 1898. He began taking drawing lessons in 1910 and proved very talented. Four years later, WWI intervened. During the war, Magritte studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. (The earliest paintings he turned out tended to copy the style of the impressionists, but they weren't really where his heart and eye were leading him.
In the early 1920s he worked as a designer for a wallpaper factory and then went into designing posters and advertising work, all the while continuing to paint. An odd and mysterious painting in 1926 called The Lost Jockey hinted at the style he was ultimately chasing, and he had his first solo exhibit in Brussels in 1927. It wasn't as well received as he'd hoped. Depressed, he moved to Paris where he fell in with a group of artists called the "surrealists." Their art was heavily influenced by dreams and the unconscious, along with a huge distrust of human reason itself, brought on by the horrors of World War One. Magritte was soon being included in exhibits alongside artists like Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso. Eventually he wound up back in Brussels with its distinctive cultural energy and continued to work. He died there in 1967.
In Brussels today there's a Magritte Museum that's dedicated to him and his work exclusively. I recently dropped in on it and was bowled over. First of all though, most of his really famous pieces-the ones you've probably seen, even if you've never heard of Magritte-aren't here. Those are scattered among major museums around the world: the MOMA in New York; the Tate in London; the National Gallery in DC, just for starters.
But still, you'll never see so many of his paintings together anywhere and that alone is worth it. Seeing more of his works together, instead of just one or two big hits, really pays off when you're trying to understand an artist.
The best thing that some great art can do is remind us that we're complicated. Humans don't function purely on reason. We're not supposed to. And we're not built to be purely materialistic. We need more than that. We're more complicated than that.
And we have Magritte to remind us.
