Essay on Rene Magritte Illusions Masking Reality

In the fallout of the first Great War, which had plagued European society for four long and brutal years, many were left to question the purpose of their existences. Stemming from the monstrously large number of casualties during the war, the mood left those whom survived to wonder how reason and logic could have started the conflict. For many people, a sense of alienation was stirred up who found the possibility of rejoining a society, which had not only allowed but prolonged such a catastrophe, to difficult. As society was adapting from war, so too were the artists and their respective movements. One such movement formed during the tumultuous years was reacting to the heighten fears of war called Dada. It is from the Dadaist movement in†¦show more content†¦In which he painted a white veil into his work, symbolic, perhaps, of the garment his mother was found in. While a teenager he was enrolled in Acadà ©mie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels until he found work drawing advertise ments for a wallpaper factory. By 1927 he moved to the epicenter of fine arts in Paris. There he was acquainted with the emerging movement of surrealism led by the writer, Andre Breton. After three years he returned to Brussels where he would remain until his death in 1967. According to some, Magritte lived a quiet, humble life never wishing to attract large amounts attention towards himself he tended to live unremarkably. In the developing stage of surrealism, two diametric schools of thought were beginning to form. The first, based heavily in a literary style called automatism, which held the ideas of creation free from the control of the mind. In this direction, abstraction of ordinary objects and the ideas of chance dominated. Among those whom clung to this style were Max Ernst and Andre Masson. This style thus became known as abstract surrealism. Oppositely, artists such as Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, and Rene Magritte would focus their art on the principles of non-sequitur and juxtapositions of ordinary objects. As well, their art took on a dreamlike quality, based in the psychoanalytical philosophy of the unconscious. Many of the surrealists found the work done by Sigmund Freud incredibly influential, especially Freud’s study