“The False Mirror”, or “Le Faux Miroir” is a surrealist painting by Belgian artist Rene Magritte (1898-1967) composed in 1928.  Surrealism was a big 20th century artistic movement that emphasized the creativeness of the unconscious mind. The title of the painting, however, was a product of the mind of Belgian Surrealist writer Paul Nouge (moma.org). Born in Lessines (a province in Hainaut, Belgium), not much is known about Magritte’s childhood- there are many legends and myths concerning the context and inspiration for his work, however. For example, many of Magritte’s paintings, including one called “Les Amants”, is rumored to portray the lovers with cloth over their faces as a result of his finding his mother’s body with her dress covering her face after suicide by drowning (wikipedia.org).

“The False Mirror” portrays a lash-less eye with the usually white iris replaced by a blue, cloud filled sky, with a black pupil smacked dead in the center. According to the gallery label at MoMA, the title thought of by Nouge was chosen to imply a restriction on the eye: mirrors directly reflect the things on the other side–Nouge suggests that the eye is subjective and chooses what it sees. It also implies blurred vision. To me, the painting drew me in simply because I have a fascination with the eyes; I am one of those “the windows are the eyes to the soul” kind of people. Reading the label and being educated about what the intention behind the painting/title was, I was a bit pleased because while I did not hit the nail right on the head, my interpretation of the painting was along those lines. In essence, it was sort of the same. The way I took it was that as humans, we only see blue skies. Blue skies are often directly associated to good days; they serve as a form of relief and almost as a symbol of hope. Personally, I associate blue skies full of clouds with optimism, almost like an “things can only get better” kind of vibe, the same way that dark and stormy skies are associated to misery. I agreed with the message I received from the painting, only because as humans we choose to ignore the negatives and downsides of life–we tend to focus on the good, because ultimately all that we want from life is happiness.

The painting above relates to Modernism and the ideas associated to it because seeing as Modernists were very much interested in incoherence and the stream of consciousness, the visual is incredibly strange and portrays the way that one’s conscious functions– it focuses mainly on what we think, and not to what we do. Also, the implication of restriction of one’s vision and seeing only what evokes positive emotion and what is ultimately beneficial to us constitutes that cynicism that is so often underlying in the Modernist works, suggesting that we are motivated by and inclined to see only what is in our best interest.