Rene Magritte's "Son of Man"

Hello, ladies!

 

Happy Day to you both!  By the time I mail this to you, it’ll almost be the end of April!  Gram-E and Gramp-E will probably be there visiting, and I’m thinking you’ll probably have started counting down the weeks until the end of school!  I know I always did starting in late April. 

 

For this painting I chose Rene Magritte’s “Son of Man”, painted in 1964 (so this one is actually pretty current, compared to the other ones I’ve sent you – Gram-E and Gramp-E were both already alive when this one was painted – and your Mom and Dad were only about 10 years away from being born).  I don’t actually like the painting all that much – it’s a man in a suit with an apple in front of his face – but I really like the interesting interpretations that have happened about it. 

Snooty art historians say that the painting is about the conflict between the person we are on the inside and the person everybody else sees when they look at us…and that by blocking his face with the apple, it forces us to think about the real person behind it, instead of just looking at his face.  That’s pretty deep.  And I like thinking deep thoughts, so that’s cool.  I think the inner me is much more interesting than the outer me – I always wonder if people looking at me have any idea of how truly awesome I really am.  Probably not…I am seriously awesome.

 

BUT…I’m not sure I agree with the snooty art historians…and this is why…when I was in art school and we had to do portraits, almost EVERYBODY had a bunch of them that looked like this.  What would happen is you’d start to do the painting…and you’d get the background to look ok, and you’d get the body shape right, and then you’d start to paint the details of the face, and faces are SUPER hard to get right, and you’d get mad, and you’d paint something silly in front of the face so you didn’t have to look at it any more.  And maybe I’m wrong, but I think that’s exactly what happened here…only for Mr. Magritte, he was able to create an interesting story around it turn it into one of the world’s most famous paintings. 

 

Anyway, that’s “Son of Man” by Rene Magritte.  Just one more painting to love!

 

Hope you are having a wonderful week in the Florida sunshine - know that I love you both very much and think that you are also awesome (it runs in the family)!

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula