René Magritte – The False Mirror – 1928
By Isabelle Taylor
This very simple image jolts the viewer by removing the eye from its usual context. Making such a simple image into a serious but haunting piece of surrealism artwork that challenges the insights of viewer.
Rene Magritte has used the concept inside/ outside in a very creative way. The giant eye is formed as a frame of a blue sky with clouds. There are different aspects in which the pupil of the eye rests dead centre in sharp colour contrast to the blue and white in the sky and also contrast of form. This image is presented without the face to which it belongs created a deconstructed eye. It further disrupts expectation by placing a circular sky inside the otherwise ordinary oculus. With this realization, it would seem that by looking at this eye, the viewers are looking into the brain. The concept of inside and outside is in cooperated through the human eye and the outside of the world. The world is only a merchandise of the human’s imagination and creation.
There are many of Magritte’s Surrealist colleagues that are made with use of eyes as a motif. In these particular artworks, as in Magritte’s, eyes undermine some basic assumptions, as they are recontextualized, multiplied, and assaulted. The Surrealists meant these kinds of images to make viewers uneasy, to unsettle complacent attitudes about art and life. This raises many questions, Is the sky a reflection of what the eye is seeing? Is the eye in fact an opening into another reality? Maritte used was an unusual techniques through x-ray to study the human eye. Are we looking at an inner vision, or something else entirely? One thing is certain: Magritte’s False Mirror is an invitation to look at the world differently. Magritte has indeed produced a good piece of art in that it addresses the visual demands of the viewer through emotion and complexity.
Rene Magritte is known for his surrealism and realism artworks. Using this to create a very magical feel to his artworks. Normally an unrelated object within a seemingly strange context. For Magritte, working in a similar mode, which were considered the products of their unconscious minds. By visualizing them, the artists believed,
