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Happy faces, showing we enjoyed our visit to the Magritte Museum.

Congratulations everyone! You all did a fantastic job with your texts and sharing your impressions. Very inspiring indeed. Thank you for your hard work and enthusiasm.

Here is ‘Sylvère’s painting’ and his text:

    MAN FROM THE SEA

Magritte painted « Man from the sea » in 1927 during his black period. Magritte paints scenes with a disturbing atmosphere, even macabre.

What I see

In background of the painting there is the sea and the sky is foggy. In front is a man in black garb with a wooden board instead of his head, stands on two pieces of floor of a house. He is trying to open or to close the window.

What I feel

I think that Magritte was really in a  black period when he painted this scene. The contrast between the blackness of the sea and the brightness of the seaside is striking. The painting plunges me into at the same time a mysterious and mesmerizing universe. The faceless man reminds me Fantômas (movie) for his crimes and offences

A story

This comes from the 1920 silent film by Marcel Herbier. Magritte employs elements from the final scene of Feuillade’s second Fantômas film « Juve contre Fantomas », in which the Man in Black raises his arms in triumph after throwing the lever that destroys a house in which Juve and Fandor are trapped. In the painting we see that Fantomas in his black garb is preparing to pull the lever to blow up the house.

Here is ‘Nicole’s painting’ and her text:

   COMPANIONS OF FEAR

This painting represents “strange nature” In the foreground, there are some big stones, sand and owls shaped like leaves In the background, there are mountains. And above it the sky is dark.

I feel that Magritte loves to represent our world in these paintings as metaphor. He often uses nature, people, things, etc. to represent it. Owls which are ink on the floor like leaves. The sky represents the sadness of people inside who don’t like their lives and they are frustrated about that. Instead of taking flight became sometimes monstrous like owls.

There is story of eagles which became owls. They flew from mountain to mountain. They were happy in their lives. One day, they wanted to see if life was better elsewhere. They flew to a place with no water, no life etc.  They rested on a floor with sand and large stones. Their legs and wings  began to take root and changed little by little into leaves with owls’ heads. Heaven represents the sadness of old eagles which became owls and prisoners of their new earth. They appear scared because they are hiding their sadness inside. The moral is that life is not necessarily more beautiful elsewhere and we should learn to appreciate the life we have.

Here is ‘Fatouma’s painting’ and her text:

   CLAIRVOYANCE – SELF PORTRAIT

A handsome man is wearing a brown suit. He is sitting on a chair, he is painting a beautiful black bird in the picture. He is not a young man, maybe 40 years old. He has attractive eyes and brown hair. I think this picture is set in 1940.

There is an egg on the table. Is it his breakfast?

Here is ‘Keti’s painting’ and her text:

   THE BLANK PAGE

What do you see ?

The Blank Page is a Magritte painting and we find it in the famous Magritte museum in Brussels.In this painting it’s night. How do you see that? Because there’s light in the windows of the houses and the moon is shining. I see also the leaves without branches next to the moon.

What do you feel ?

When I observe this painting, I see the contrast. I have the feeling that Magritte wants to represent a human being. How could this moon which is shining with the nice blue color in the night and the houses which are dark be a representation of human? I said that the light which is shining shows that there’s life, a presence. I think that although these houses are dark there’s life in them. The moon is there to shine through the darkness and the leaves show that there’s life too.

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see” said Magritte. The moon cannot be in the same position as the leaves. It’s supposed to be above all things. As it’s the same position as the leaves it symbolizes that the moon equals life.

Make a story

In his bedroom at midnight as he couldn’t sleep, he saw the reflexion about everybody in this world. In our life there are dark periods it means the night and the darkness in this painting but we can also have the light periods in our lives which are represented by the moon and the leaves.

There’s hope for our lives. Why do I say that? The title doesn’t reflect reality. When something is blank there’s nothing. So, we can put something in it to create life.

Here is ‘Marie’s painting’ and her text:

   THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM

Little description of the painting

One of peculiarity of Magritte is to put an object in an unexpected place.In the background of his painting we can see a mountain, a really big and imposing mountain. It’s really strange because « inside » the mountain we see an eagle.

The painting is light, the mountain is mixed up with hell.In the foreground we can imagine that someone is looking at the mountain and probably the someone is in a castle and is looking at from over there.

On the wall we can find two eggs put there. Really strange place to put eggs. At the same time, in some paintings of Magritte you can find an egg put there in an unexpected place. Maybe the egg symbolizes new things, new ideas, a new spring of imagination, inspiration.

The reason I chose this painting

I chose this painting because I like the mountain.It’s a really imposing element of nature. I admire the mountain for her strength.The eagle symbolizes also greatness.

A little story

A long long time ago there was a kingdom with a king and two young princes who had more or less the same age. The Kingdom lived in peace and the king thought that was the moment to marry one of his princes to be sure someone succeeded him. One day the strong prince, symbolized by a dragon, met a young princess who came from another kingdom far far away. From the first minutes he met her, he liked her but it was not the same for the young princess. By chance, one day she met the strong prince’s brother and felt in love with him.

Came the day where the kingdom was at war and during this battle lost his king. In the end the kingdom survived the war but the strong prince who succeeded on the throne occupied by sadness and revenge hunted his brother in the mountain, beyond the borders of the kingdom because he betrayed him and stole the young princess’s heart. Finally the young prince was killed by men engaged by his brother.

Since that day you can see drawn in the mountain behind the castle an eagle. The strong prince who never spoke about the symbol of his brother with his father supposed the eagle represented him. Since that day he found on the balcony of his bedroom 2 eggs. Since that day the strong prince was filled with sorrow…

Here is ‘Placide’s painting’ and his text:

   A STROKE OF LUCK

I SEE

I see a human body with the head of a pig. Before him, there is a cemetery. To his left, there is a tomb in the shape of a monument. Basically I see blue and cloudy sky.

I FEEL

There is first a gap between the painting’s title “A stroke of Luck” and reality.

The painter is not realistic in depicting a human body with an animal head.

Compared to the title, the animal man has the Luck to leave the real word to move towards death. While having a spirit of the world that it leaves.

These tombs without a religious symbol make us think of a secular word where  living together is possible in relation to the real word with full of conflicts.

In a world where there are more and more looking differences happiness man tends to sometimes escape the pain to go towards death. This painting explains what happens now with immigrants.

STORY

It is story of an animal man in search of happiness. He goes to death while thinking of the world that he just left. This reminds me of the Titanic movie or men to escape death, they head to death.

It’s a sad story, believing that it is a fluke, the natural man precipitated its end. As said the King Hassan II of Morocco: “Looking too much in the mirror, we may have an accident”

Here is ‘Akouvi’s painting’ and her text:

THE SECRET PLAYER OF MAGRITTE

Magritte is a native Belgian; he studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts from 1915. Surrealist artist, he is famous for his colorful and mysterious paintings.

He used such things as musical notes and animals to represent different things in his works. Sometimes these rather innocent things could take on a rather sinister feel to them, as a result of Magritte placing them where they “do not belong”.

WHAT I SEE

SECRET PLAYER 1927 is the first painting completed where Magritte found his distinct style.

Secret Player: there is the turtle and there is the woman; literally, closeted away in the background. The painting shows two men playing an apparently serious game resembling baseball. A strange bird-like object hovers above them and the painting of a woman wearing a mask rests subtly in the background.

WHAT I FEEL

When I look at this painting, I think that Magritte sees an imaginary world where people can be in osmosis with nature ( animals, trees, water,) or can play with nature, but the woman with a mask represents a person who has a double life, she hides her true nature. In society she looks different but in reality she is another person. The two representations: the 2 men playing and a woman with a mask for me, it is what people need, “A BETTER WORLD” where they can be what they are.

STORY

Magritte is thinking about his life and the lives of many people around him. He realises that they appear as society would like. So they try to be like that but in reality behind the mask which they have, they would shout to the whole world the person who they are.