peculiarity.

I chose Rene Magritte for my research post.  I've always been drawn to his style.  I find it to be unusual and delicate.  I love his use of soft colors, because it fits my personal taste but I also love the abstractness of his art. His painting force you to think "I wonder what this is about." Out of the variety of artist we had to choose from, I am most drawn to his work.

René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist.  He began to explore drawing and painting in 1910, and expressed a interest and displayed a unique point of view on art. In 1912, while Margritte was still young, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. Some reports say, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face. This is interesting because  many of his paintings show peoples faced clothed with material. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Artsin Brussels but he felt uninspired by his classed and teachers. A period of his paintings from 1943 to 1944  were colorful and cheery in style.  This was considered his "Renoir Period" because Renoir often painted happy and beautiful scenes. In 1947–48, Magritte painted in a provoking and crude style. During this time he made his money by the production of fake Picassos, Braques and Chiricos. (I found that amusing.)

At the end of 1948, he went back to his original style and themes in his surrealistic art. His work was shown in  New York in 1936, the Museum of Modern Art in 1965, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992.

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer in 1967 at age 68.

 Magritte's work frequently displayed ordinary objects in an odd way, which makes people look at everyday things differently. Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

 Something I found funny and interesting about René Magritte is that he chose most

titles of his works at random. A lot of people, including myself, put a lot of thought into a title because I feel it can sort of sum up the work as a whole.  I do however, like the idea of random titles.  It definitely plays into the peculiarity of his art.