Rene Magritte

Introduction

The enormous growth of interest in the work of Ren6 Magritte is testimony to his life as a creative person. The life and work of such individuals can he viewed from a multitude of perspectives; no single one accounting for things in their entirety, yet each contributing in some way to an understanding of the whole. We thereby come to understand their historical moment, psychological being, and forms of creativity. Some of these perspectives are those of art history, art criticism, and psychoanalysis. The view I wish to present is that of the cognitive psychology of visual perception, as this too may further our understanding of Magritte. As a cognitive, Magritte creates the necessary and sufficient conditions which enable the visual system to dynamically alter perceptual organizations. This is especially true with regard to our perceptual experience of what is occluded (covered and behind) and what is not. I wish to examine the ways in which Magritte creatively allows us to manipulate occlusion in five types of perception. These categories of perception are that of figure-ground, aperture, transparency, reflection and complete occlusion.

Art History / Art Criticism

Magritte has received the greatest amount of attention from those perspectives in which he is viewed as a part of the Surrealistic movement-a response to the insanity and carnage of World War I. [l] Not merely a response to other artistic movements such as Dada, but also an “in your face”, counter-conformist reaction moving away from realism to dream nightmare imagery in which the boundaries of consciousness are loosened and rendered more fugue like. Haymaker discusses this focus as that of the experiences of half-sleep, or those just prior to waking and points to Magritte's fascination with the lucidity of these mental events, while also being aware of their fuzzy distinction from memories of the waking state. (21 From these descriptions we could also place it in what is called stage 1 of non-REM sleep.

Anyone attempting to store in memory the titles of even a short list of Magritte's paintings, immediately finds the task quite daunting. Several writers have considered the important role of the relationship between language and imagery in the artist's work. Jacques Metris discusses the interesting group process which often led to the naming of a completed work, showing that the intent was not only to raise questions about the meaning of words themselves but to create a poetic marriage between the images related feelings and its title. Suzy Gable has pointed out the similarities in this regard between the work of Magritte and the philosophy of Wittgenstein in their separate efforts to grapple with the paradoxes arising from language itself. Indeed there are ways in which a painting of a pipe both is and is not a pipe. The viewer is thereby challenged to reevaluate what was conveyed in the painted image, as well as what is being concealed by the image. The omnipresent theme of mystery and intrigue are thereby maintained by Magritte in that the viewer is unavoidably left ...