“The Portrait” was painted by René Magritte during the Surrealism period in 1935. René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist. He was born on November 21, 1898, and lived in a wealthy family. Around 1912, his mom had committed suicide and the entire family was publicly humiliated by that event. He studied at Brussels Academy of Fine Arts and became an important member in the Belgian Surrealist movement. After he drop out of academia and began his career, his true calling in the art world, surrealism. Some of his earliest works are “The Menaced Assassin” and “The Lost Jockey” which catapulted his career.
The main subject in the painting is the seemingly normal breakfast. There is a bottle of wine, a glass cup, fork, knife, and a plate with a slice of ham on it. All of these are drawn realistically with shadings and shadows. The only thing that is exempt from these is the ham, which has a realistic-looking eye in the middle. The painting is also framed so that the viewer is about to eat the breakfast or the breakfast is inviting you to eat it.
This work reflects upon the ideas of modernism or surrealism by depicting a common morning routine, but with a twist. The routine is a morning breakfast and the twist that makes it surreal is an eye in the ham. By doing this he seemingly broke away from the past of realism and into the realm of absurdity. When I first saw the eye in the ham, I thought it may have represented the society watching your every move. I also wondered why there is only a slice of ham as the main meal. Is the person that is going to eat breakfast poor? If so then why is there a whole bottle of wine?
I discovered this painting in MoMA on floor 5, gallery 517. I was walking around this floor that contains collections of works from the 1880s to 1940s. As I was looking for a painting that interested me. I quickly passed by multiple paintings when “The Portrait” caught my eyes, due to its realistic depictions of our world in contrast to the rest that simply depicted odd shapes and imaginative or fictional versions of our reality. I wonder in my head why he chose this style of modernism over the wacky and unrealistic depictions and the real reason why he depicts the breakfast the why he does.
Sources:
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79990?artist_id=3692&page=1&sov_referrer=artist
This is a great example of Magritte’s surrealism. In addition to the way that the Surrealists introduce a dream-like quality of strangeness into their work, I also find that Magritte’s work is often strangely humorous. There is something strange and funny about this work to me. I agree with you that there is a suggestion that maybe we are all being watched – even in the privacy of our own homes.