Rene Magritte- The Empire of Light – Guggenheim Museum
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Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.
–Rene Magritte
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I wasn’t sure what this post was going to be about when I started. Still don’t know, to be honest. I was simply going to put up a short quote with a painting or two by an artist, as I sometimes do. In this case the artist was the famed Surrealist Rene Magritte.
I liked the quote above. Simple. Concise. Right to the point.
Plus, I think it lines up with an answer that I sometimes give when someone asks how I became a painter. I will answer, “Hey, everybody has to do something.”
That opens up what could be a whole philosophical discussion about what our obligations really are in our lives as humans.
Are we really obliged to do something?
I don’t know.
Maybe. I guess not doing something is, in it’s own way, doing something. I know that when I am not a painter I am, among many things, sometimes a lazy slob.
Life obliges me to do something, so I do nothing.
That doesn’t have quite the same cache as Magritte’s statement but it is sometimes true.
But for the most part, when life obliges me to do something, I paint.
Not like Magritte. In my own way, at my own pace and of my own choosing.
Hey, life can push me around but only so far.
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PS: I was going to write about the painting at the top which is one version of a painting, The Empire of Light, that Magritte painted fourteen times. The subject was not going to be about the night scene of this painting with a blue sky above. Rather, it was to be about the repetition of forms by artists, a subject to which I am well acquainted. Maybe next time.
Now, let’s look at some other Magritte paintings.
Rene Magritte- Decalcomania – 1966
Rene Magritte- The Mysteries of the Horizon 1928
Rene Magritte- The Son of Man 1964
Rene Magritte- The Beautiful Relations 1966
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