Rene Magritte
Golconda (aka Golconde) by Rene Magritte
Rene Francois Magritte was born in 1898 in an area of Belgium known as the Black Country [named because of it’s barren landscape and grey skies]. He was the eldest of three boys. At he age of 6 Magritte’s family moved to a suburb of Brussels and bought a house located on the River Sambre. He began his artistic pursuit early in life attending weekly art classes above the local bakery. His earliest work was focused on landscape painting. Magritte’s father believed Rene was a child prodigy and supported his artistic efforts in every way possible.
Magritte studied art at the Academie Des Beaux Arts in Brussels from 1916-1918. During this time his artwork was influenced by Henri Matisse’s cubism and the Italian Futurists. After a short stint in the army he married his high school friend Georgette Berger and earned his living designing wall paper, posters and other advertisements. In 1922 Magritte saw a painting by the surrealist painter Georgio De Chirico which made a deep impression and ultimately led him to painting his first surrealistic work in 1925 [The menaced Assassin].
The Surrealist movement began in the late 1920’s to the late 1930’s. Artists, writers and film makers created dreamlike, illogical scenes with an unsettling quality. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise and often depict things that have little connection with one another. One of the goals of the Surrealist artists was to challenge the viewer and get them to see the world in a different way. In 1953 Magritte painted Golconda, named after a ancient ruined city in India, which was known for diamond mining. The name Golconda came to mean anything that makes a lot of money. The oil painting depicts a matrix of hundreds of men in bowler hats floating in the sky above a series of ordinary looking buildings. Magritte used a realistic style when painting the image so despite the absurd scene the imagery is quite convincing. It is the juxtaposition of the men positioned in the sky on an ordinary street that creates the dreamlike quality of the painting. Magritte liked to use his odd subject matter to remind the viewer that paintings are not real, no matter how convincing they may look.
The picture depicts a hexagonal grid of nearly identical men in trench coats and bowler hats, showing the monotony of business life and how life had become for the working people. The men appear to be floating like balloons at different distances although they show now signs of motion. Magritte lived in an urban area thought to be much like this and had to dress in a similar way, the dark coat and especially the bowler hat feature in many of his other works.
Although the men are placed in a hexagonal grid they appear random when placed on top of each other showing that even though everyone is different it makes them all the same. The curtains in the houses are closed showing that no one is noticing such a strange event this must either mean ignorance or its a common thing everyone is a drone in Magritte's work.
* I brought in other Magritte works - particularly the one of him with the apple in front of his face and the "this is not a pipe" picture and discussed those as well. His works like the "apple face" were meant to make the viewer question what was truly behind the apple. You may assume that the men would look like the men from Golconda, but what if this man behind the apple actually had a mustache, goatee, or beard. Maybe the apple is hiding a deformity. The same with "this is not a pipe" - why does the picture say that? The point is that we all know it is a painting of a pipe but Magritte would ask the viewer if you could actually smoke that picture. Since you cannot, it truly is not a pipe. Our 4th graders really were excited by this discussion and what surrealism could mean.
questions:
- Ask the students what they think the focal point of the painting is. Where does the eye go to first?
- What kind of colors did Magritte use in Golconda? Are the colors bright or dull? Are they realistic or unrealistic?
- Ask the students if they think the men are raining down from the sky or are they floating? Why do they think this? Does it make sense or is it unrealistic?
- Talk about how Magritte’s realistic style of painting contrasts with his subject matter. The individual elements look realistic while the scene itself is unrealistic. Ask the students how this makes them feel? Is it funny? Unsettling? Confusing?
- Discuss why all the men look the same and are dressed alike? What does this mean to them? Is Magritte trying to say that people are all the same and as insignificant as a drop of falling rain?
Show other Surreal paintings and compare and contrast the images.
activities:
Have the students create a drawing of an ordinary street or scene and have them illustrate something surreal raining from the sky.
Surrealists were known for putting object together that are out of place, didn’t go together or playing with proportion [having a giant apple in the middle of a room]. Have the students create their own surreal scene using the same ideas. Bring in a wide variety of clipped images from magazines and have the students select several to compose their own Surreal scene by gluing the clippings paper.
Magritte often used parts of strange dreams he had as inspiration for his paintings. Have the students try to remember a dream that didn’t make sense and have them draw a picture of it.
