The True Reality
Acrylic Paint on Canvas
91.44 cm x 91.44 cm
Exhibition
|
In The True Reality, I wanted to present a modern-day parody of Rene Magritte's painting, The False Mirror. My painting is essentially showing the viewer the atrocities that occur in Syria through the eyes of a Syrian child. My painting presents an enormous lashless eye with an enormous air strike missile filling the iris and an opaque, dead-black disc for a pupil. Apart from Magritte as being an inspiration, I was also heavily influenced by current political events happening around the world.
|
PLANNING
Artistic Inspiration
René Magritte
The False Mirror Oil on Canvas (54 cm x 80.9 cm) Paris 1929 |
René Magritte
The Son of Man Oil on Cavas (89cm x 116 cm) Private Collection 1946 |
I used Magritte as my artistic inspiration because he settled on a deadpan, illustrative technique that clearly articulated the content of his pictures. Repetition was an important strategy for Magritte, informing not only his handling of motifs within individual pictures, but also encouraging him to produce multiple copies of some of his greatest works.The illustrative quality of Magritte's pictures often results in a powerful paradox. His images are both beautiful in their clarity and simplicity, but also provoke unsettling thoughts. They seem to declare that they hide no mystery, and yet they are also marvelously strange. The False Mirror by René Magritte presents an enormous lashless eye with a calming cloud-swept blue sky filling the iris and an opaque, dead-black disc for a pupil. The allusive title seems to suggest the limits to the authority of optical vision. The enormous eye serves as a mirror and provides a mechanical reflection, but the eye is also selective and subjective. Viewers of the art piece both look through the eye, as if looking out a window, and is also looked back by the eye. This gives it the function of seeing through and being seen simultaneously. The eye in the painting seems to have seen as much as it itself is seen. In the painting, The Son of Man, Magritte used the apple to hide his real face and in his own comments about the painting, Magritte discussed the human desire to see what's hidden behind the visible. He spoke of the conflict that can arise between "the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present". Magritte cleverly captures this feeling within the picture. The viewer is both curious and frustrated about the face which cannot be seen because of the position of the apple. The viewer has to imagine what the face is like. I wanted my painting to be beautiful yet powerful in its message, just like the many paintings of Magritte.
Planning Sketches and Experimentations
The sketches on the left were practices on drawing eyes and experimentation with colors. The colors I would mainly be using in my painting were brown and pink. I researched what most eyes looked like when an individual has been crying and took down notes in my planning sketches. Most eyes get puffy and swollen and the whites of the eye are replaced with a pink tint. I experimented with the effects of pink around certain areas of the eyes and found out that generally, the pink should be kept close the eye shape outline and on both ends of the eye. Adding pink around the whole eye made the eye look abnormal. Based on the eye references I had collected, I decided to paint the front and middle section of the eye with a light pink and blend it into a darker pink as it extends towards the end of the eye. Another observation I noticed was that the area above the eye was lighter in color than the area below the eye. That meant that pink would dominate the top area and brown would dominate the bottom area. The sketches on the left were experimentations with different eye shapes. Upon looking up pictures of Syrian children, I decided on using an upturned eye shape, as it was the most frequent eye shape I observed. I also looked up missile and bomb explosions to understand the shapes the smoke created. The shading was an important skill that I needed to know in order to be successful in painting smoke.
PROCESS
|
Using a recycled canvas, I painted the whole canvas brown as my base color and sketched the eye shape with a white colored pencil. Once I was satisfied with the pencil sketch, I painted the iris a light blue, occasionally adding more white paint to lighten certain areas. I did this simply to give the sky more colors rather than just have it be a solid light blue. I then painted a flat brown strip on the bottom part of the iris. This would be the land in the eye. Using a reference picture, I painted the missile explosion using the stippling technique with an old brush to give it a more feathered-out look. Once that was done, I painted in the corners of the eye with a light pink and added white to make the eye appear shinier and moist. I later discovered that crying eyes are swollen and pink all over so I adjusted my painting to reflect an actual crying eye. To finish up the painting, I added shadows to the corners of my canvas and shaded around the eye to give it more depth.
|
REFLECTION
Meaning
The meaning of this piece was to demonstrate to my viewers what Syrian children today see in an everyday basis. The enormous eye serves as a mirror and provides a mechanical reflection, but the eye is also selective and subjective. Viewers of the art piece both look through the eye, as if looking out a window, and is also looked back by the eye. This gives it the function of seeing through and being seen simultaneously. The eye in the painting seems to have seen as much as it itself is seen. As of now, there have been approximately 13,462 airstrikes in Syria and 98, 532 bombs and missiles dropped. On September 24th, 38 new strikes were reported. The Syrian war has gone on since 2013. Through my painting, I wanted to bring awareness to the Syrian war and the have my viewers understand the seriousness of the death toll its had on its population. Syria now represents one of the world’s biggest and thorniest challenges as it spawns a refugee crisis and puts Russia and Iran on a possible collision course with the United States and its allies. By January 2015, some 220,000 Syrians had been killed in the conflict, according to the United Nations. More than four million Syrians have fled their country, creating a wave of refugees who first flooded Syria’s neighbors and increasingly are headed to Europe. The conflict started as a civil war opposing Assad and rebels demanding his departure. Government forces stepped up repressive tactics, and the fighting quickly worsened. Now for the first time since the end of World War Two, U.S. and Russian military forces are involved in a common armed conflict with opposing aims as the world holds its breath.
Compare and Contrast
SIMILARITIES:
|
DIFFERENCES:
|
ACT RESPONSES
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
My painting is directly inspired by Magritte's work, from his subject and composition, to the colors and techniques. Magritte's works feature a lot of smooth blending and faded colors, giving his paintings a vintage look.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author has a formal approach in regards to Magritte. The author explains key points in understanding Magritte's art and provides an unbiased view on his art. The author goes above and beyond by even providing a few analysis on some of Magritte's best works.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I discovered that in Syria, entire families are being killed by U.S. airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria. A relatively small number of ISIS militants are fighting to the death to defend their putative capital, while an estimated 160,000 civilians are trapped in dire circumstances, caught between the armed factions on the ground and bombarded by U.S. airstrikes and artillery barrages. According to an article by The Intercept, a website online, “The airplanes are heavily striking the city, and many of the places they are targeting are empty of ISIS fighters and full of civilians,” an anti-ISIS Syrian activist from Raqqa told The Intercept. “The number of civilians being killed today is much more than the ISIS members." This fact should bring alarm to everyone. The rate of child fatality is increasing in Syria.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was war and conflict.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred that no child deserves to see death and violence on an everyday basis. I can only imagine what I would feel if my city was air struck constantly. I get anxiety just thinking about family and neighbors being impacted by it and getting killed. It ironic that the U.S. is host to many Syrian refugees when we're the ones bombarding them.
My painting is directly inspired by Magritte's work, from his subject and composition, to the colors and techniques. Magritte's works feature a lot of smooth blending and faded colors, giving his paintings a vintage look.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author has a formal approach in regards to Magritte. The author explains key points in understanding Magritte's art and provides an unbiased view on his art. The author goes above and beyond by even providing a few analysis on some of Magritte's best works.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I discovered that in Syria, entire families are being killed by U.S. airstrikes in Raqqa, Syria. A relatively small number of ISIS militants are fighting to the death to defend their putative capital, while an estimated 160,000 civilians are trapped in dire circumstances, caught between the armed factions on the ground and bombarded by U.S. airstrikes and artillery barrages. According to an article by The Intercept, a website online, “The airplanes are heavily striking the city, and many of the places they are targeting are empty of ISIS fighters and full of civilians,” an anti-ISIS Syrian activist from Raqqa told The Intercept. “The number of civilians being killed today is much more than the ISIS members." This fact should bring alarm to everyone. The rate of child fatality is increasing in Syria.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was war and conflict.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I inferred that no child deserves to see death and violence on an everyday basis. I can only imagine what I would feel if my city was air struck constantly. I get anxiety just thinking about family and neighbors being impacted by it and getting killed. It ironic that the U.S. is host to many Syrian refugees when we're the ones bombarding them.
Bibliography
- “Rene Magritte Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story: Modern Art Insight, The Art Story Foundation, www.theartstory.org/artist-magritte-rene.htm. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.