Rene Magritte Inspired Eye

Our artistic study is on Belgium artist Rene Magritte.  Magritte was part of the surrealism movement and liked to challenge people's ideas on what they should see through his paintings.  He said "if the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream."

The surrealism movement began in the mid-1920s in France.  It started as a philosophical movement that said the way to find truth in the world was through the subconscious mind and dreams rather than logical thoughts.  Surrealism artwork often made little sense because it usually depicted a dream or random thought.

Our project is based on Magritte's work "The False Mirror".  I will show an image of this piece in class.  You can also google it.  The work features a close-up of an eye.  The eye forms a frame of blue sky and clouds.  The pupil is a contrast between the hard outline of the pupil and the soft clouds.  Some questions I came across when looking at the work:  "is the sky part of the eye?", "is the sky reflected by the eye?", "is the eye a looking glass to see the sky?"  "The False Mirror" was also described as "the viewer looks through it as a window and is looked at by it (eye)."  This should provide some lively conversations in class as we discuss the piece and what the students see!

For our project, we will draw a very large eye.  The students will then create their own scene.  They will have a choice between crayons, colored pencils and markers to add color to their work.

Please excuse the very bad photo of my example!