Brussels is not only famous for its luxurious chocolates and breathtaking nature, it’s also famous for its very fixating art and history.
The Magritte Museum resides in the center of Brussels in the Sablon area. This area has very nice gardens around it and also has the Royal Palace and “Le Palais De Justice” which is a breathtaking building – next to it you can even observe the magnificent view giving way to the sky and the lower grounds of Brussels – an architectural trance. Brussels is full of this beauty, and the Belgian artist Renee Magritte made sure to express his love for beauty through his thought-provoking, mind-boggling, yet genius art.
Walk into the museum and be captivated by the intense beauty of its roof, statues, and paintings which are a kind of an “introduction” to art itself before you explore Magritte’s mind. Oh - mind you - if you’re the kind of person to have a big bag pack or a big annoying expensive purse, lockers are available to suit your need to enjoy art without carrying an atrocious amount of weight around with you. The museum contains Magritte’s sketches, articles about him, quotes and of course some of his most famous paintings. With each painting you feel an urge to think, to think like Renee Magritte, and to try and understand why he would paint pieces like this. Does the name of the painting relate to the meaning? Or is the meaning in the painting? Does the name even relate to the painting itself? It’s really up to you to open your mind to the endless possibilities.
Magritte was a man of surrealism; he makes the realistic look distorted and he puts you in his trance full of the unknown, full of new textures and colours and ideas. His fascination for the female body was expressed through his very surrealistic view of the female body – this is shown through one of his many paintings, which included relatively real-looking breasts on a floating, seemingly empty nightgown.
“La Philosophie Dans Le Boudoir” (1971) by Renee Magritte
“La Philosophie Dans Le Boudoir” (1971) by Renee Magritte
There is more than the “Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe”; Magritte’s surrealism was constantly changing and distorting and was sometimes very challenging to comprehend as his ideas are just too complex. It may be an appreciation of the simplicity of life through a minor distortion of the realistic. What we do know is that Magritte is an undeniable genius and his art is greatly appreciated all around the world, and constantly appreciated by the Bruxellois.
Written by: Ryan Jordan