Monday, November 21, 2016

René Magritte, born November 21, 1898

Since this is the birthday of surrealist painter René Magritte (1898-1967), I thought I would celebrate. Here are two of his well-known paintings that include apples and pears. I don't think he considered these to be food paintings, but I still selected them as somewhat related to my search for interesting examples of food in art.

Magritte: The Son of Man, 1964.
A quote from an interview with Magritte about this painting:
"At least it hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present." -- Wikipedia citation: Radio interview with Jean Neyens (1965), cited in Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, trans. Richard Millen (New York: Harry N. Abrams), p.172.

Magritte: The Memory of a Voyage, 1952.

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