artist of the day --magritte

Today I will touch briefly on the art of Magritte. I like him because he was highly individualistic in his style and work. The reason I chose this piece is because it is important to understand the philosophy behind it.

In french it reads "this is not a pipe"....

but it is a pipe you say!

no--it is a painting of a pipe---There is a huge distinction. Descartes learned us human hillbillies long ago that The Map is not the territory and when you truly understand a painting is what it is beyond what it is supposed to portray or represent you are truly a wiser fool.

René Magritte described his paintings by saying,

My painting is 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.

It is hard to see him with fresh eyes as his work as has been horribly bastardized through illustration and cheap graphic design to no end. One of my professors from art school was one of the Main Offenders of the school of bastardization of the work of Magritte in illustration and he was followed by an entire group of like minded lemming-monkeys who further bastardized the work of said professor thus making a photocopy of a photocopy and so on and so on--ad nauseum etc and etc. I sat in the corner watching the monkeys try to type out all the works of Shakespeare on the typerwriter of non-individual thought, dropped out and became Gardega.