The empire of light rene magritte biography

With no fantastic element other than the single paradoxical combination of day and night, Rene Magritte upsets a fundamental organizing premise of life. Sunlight, ordinarily the source of clarity, here causes the confusion and unease traditionally associated with darkness. The luminosity of the sky becomes unsettling, making the empty darkness below even more impenetrable than it would seem in a normal context.

The bizarre subject is treated in an impersonal, precise style, typical of veristic Surrealist painting and preferred by Magritte since the mids. What is represented in a picture is what is visible to the eye, it is the thing or the things that had to be thought of. Thus, what is represented in the picture are the things I thought of, to be precise, a nocturnal landscape and a skyscape such as can be seen in broad daylight.

The landscape suggests night and the skyscape day. His paintings were then copied to the walls on a scale, in a degree panorama ft. Another painting from , in which Magritte switched the lighting, with a sunlit landscape under a night sky is Le salon de Dieu God's Drawing Room , oil on canvas, 43 x 59 cm. Magritte discussed the painting in an undated letter to Suzi Gablik stating: "I'd like to tell you I've brought off a very difficult picture, but which is probably too difficult to be successful?

It involves a painting of a daylit landscape with a nocturnal sky stars and crescent moon. I've painted and repainted this picture and I'm at the disenchanted stage, It's a total failure! But to see it and reproduce it in paint is possible only if one is a God. While waiting to become one, I'm abandoning the project. The work was part of the collection of interior designer Mica Ertegun , and was described by Christie's as the "crown jewel" of her holdings.

The sale set a world record for both Magritte and surrealist works at auction. Magritte commented on the paintings in a televised interview in , about the time he received his Guggenheim Prize. For me, the conception of a painting is an idea of one thing or several things that can become visible through my painting. It is understood that all ideas are not conceptions for pictures.

Obviously, an idea must be sufficiently stimulating for me to undertake to paint faithfully the thing or things I have ideated. The conception of a picture, that is, the idea, is not visible in the picture: an idea cannot be seen with the eyes. What is represented in a picture is what is visible to the eyes, it is the thing or things that must have been ideated.

Thus, what are represented in the picture The Empire of Light are the things I ideated, i. The landscape evokes night and the sky evokes day. I call this power: poetry. If I believe this evocation has such poetic power, it is because among other reasons, I have always felt the greatest interest in night and in day, yet without ever having preferred one or the other.

This great personal interest in night and day is a feeling of admiration and astonishment. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Leopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse.

Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several oil paintings Magritte painted in of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants. Magritte's earliest oil paintings, which date from about , were Impressionistic in style. From to he studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring.

The oil paintings he produced during the years were influenced by Futurism and by the offshoot of Cubism practiced by Metzinger. Most of his works of this period are female nudes. In Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in In , he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until , when a contract with Galerie la Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time.

In , Magritte produced his first surreal oil painting, The Lost Jockey Le jockey perdu , and held his first exhibition in Brussels in Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Just as Magritte was achieving success and recognition, the Second World War broke out. Although he continued to develop his signature style, he also increasingly deployed a bright, impressionistic palette as a subversive response to the bleakness of the war.

He wrote, "The sense of chaos, of panic, which Surrealism hoped to foster so that everything might be called into question was achieved much more successfully by those idiots the Nazis Against widespread pessimism, I now propose a search for joy and pleasure. This phase was followed by Magritte's brief experiment with an intentionally provocative "savage" style he called "vache" "cow" that was characterized by vulgar subjects, crude coloring, and is generally regarded as parodying the Fauves.

As Magritte expected, his works in this style were phenomenally unpopular. For the remainder of the s and '60s, Magritte returned to his characteristic style and set of subjects. By the end of his life, he enjoyed great success and there were six major retrospectives of his oeuvre in the s alone. Magritte's work had a major impact on a number of movements that followed his death, including Pop , Conceptualism , and the painting of the s.

In particular, his work was hailed as a harbinger of upcoming trends in art for its emphasis on concept over execution, its close association with commercial art, and its focus on everyday objects that were often repeated in pictorial space. Content compiled and written by Sophia Powers. Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors.

The Art Story. Important Art. Bather Familiar Objects The Treachery of Images The Ocean The Pebble Empire of Light Early Training. Mature Period. Late Period. Influences and Connections. Useful Resources. Similar Art and Related Pages. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows; it becomes what the world offers it.

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