The red model: Surrealism often focused on unusual objects in familiar settings or familiar objects in unusual settings, playing with the new meanings this could bring to objects. Rene Magritte’s work also seeks to achieve this and had this to say about his own work: “visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” However a lot of Magritte’s work had humorously ironic symbolism hidden amongst the images.
It was painted just after his mother died and many people have commented that the back and forth play of reality reflects his feelings at that time. Also famous was his “this is not a pipe,” wishing to express the deceptive nature of images.
In this painting the two shoes change to feet or vice versa. I think it’s unusual in how well the texture and pattern of the background and environment are painted, but the feet are done in a more typical style, smoothed and avoiding detail, yet to a certain degree proportionally correct and tonally quite flat. I find the quality of surrealism difficult to described, as if the image has been squashed.
FozzyFozz 