That Apple that is an apple that is not an Apple dept.

Magritte

I always thought that the old cartoons like the bug’s bunny from the 40s? And 30' stuff had a look to them sometimes of René Magritte, there is Something comforting in those cartoons and Magritte too, even though there Is often a disturbing or dark edge to some of his work, it has mystery but so much Of it for me is very peaceful like a rainy summer day watching the rain from inside or strolling about through the park. Perhaps sometimes the vividness of life can be practically excruciating, and Magritte and the cartoons gives a understandable sign for things, in both we understand the language, a fireplace is simple and perfect in its place.

But is it a fireplace?  Both make Reference to the world, sometimes to the absurdity, sometimes to the threat of the world. The world is treated like an outside object, and when bugs or Magritte confront the world They disarm and displace the world and show it as foolish or crazy, both recognize as does a child, the brimming hypocritical nature of much of the world, and in its place they Offer a hermetic world whose gestures vocabulary and images are immediately understandable to all that see the contradiction between ones inner world and the world at Large. It is worth pointing out, that one of Magrittes passions was for the silent films of the character “Fantomas” whom much like Bugs bunny was forever being hounded by authority figures in absurd and impossible situations and always coming out the winner.   And in bugs and Fantomas, a perhaps better word than winner might be to say, that they both always manage to escape the clutches of the world.

But this hermetic world is not offered up to us, as a personal fantasy world of the artist for us to troll for clues of madness or delight.  Rather it is this world seen through the eyes of one person, and what his vision has in common with billons of others is the knowledge that the world as run by the impulse of greed and ignorance is basically flawed.  The rules of the world in a destructive capitalistic culture that worships the multinational corporation firstly through fear and propaganda, secondly through the military might of its nations is only An amplified version of the world of Magritte’s time.  One is reminded when looking at Magrittes painting of a proportionally enormous apple of Picassos statement that, “ an apple can be as revolutionary as a gun.” What Magritte says in his paintings, is that those tyrants of life are that the tyrants and their rules that billons recognize as flawed and against the basic principles of human nature, is that they do not claim him, he is a free man of mind and body, and he states this with great clarity and creativity

For Magritte the paintings are not predictions for the future, they are his own statements of now, others are welcomed to participate in their own fashion immediately. For Magritte his own inner world is constantly at war with the outer world as a given. His great achievement as an artist is to state this with amazing visual creative poetry.  Magritte even when there is darkness, and there is a lot of dread in his work, it is regarded in his own terms, it is brought into the language of the inner world, the essential point of Magritte work being the gulf between inner and outer realities.

Magritte voiced his disapproval, of anyone regarding his work as A sort of symbolism.   The freedom to imagine possibilities requires Actualization. Magritte in using a basically conservative realist technique achieves with great creativity a world of the real Where things “look real as in life” while at the same time contradicting the physical reality and status quo of the world. One is reminded of the song by Lennon “Give peace a chance” The ending refrain of, “ war is over…if you want it.”  Likewise In Magritte, the ultimate freedoms of creative possibilities and Transformations of the world are at hand now…if you want it.

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