Alan Hagerty’s Moma Visit: The Lovers
“The Lovers” painted by René Magritte in 1928 is in my opinion one of the more interesting and clear examples of modernism in the museum. Modernism as an art form was one that saw all old ways of thinking, including everything from architecture to science, as ill fitting for the new industrialized world and was a rejection of realism. This art movement focused on more on emotion and stylized rather then the down to earth realism or the polarizing extremes of Romanticism. The Lovers best express this by having the focus be of two people kissing, a scene that is very realistic with the background framing the scene with a simplistic yet architecturally sound room. Indeed the painting might have been a great example of realism without the major points of the painting being added. the lovers are wearing masks of cloth around their faces being both striking yet alluring to the watcher for making the scene surreal and have a feeling of deeper meaning. The bacground of walls and a ceiling are also drasticly different colors on right side wall red, on the background wall a cloudy dark grey, and the ceiling white. This too places the viewer in a sense of mystery while the mostly dark colors used in the painting adds a feeling of foreboding.
In my interpretation the cloth around their faces work as kind of masks and, in such an intimate scene of two people kissing, might mean that these people are masking their true selves and that the love that they are showing is not what they truly feel. The fact that the cloth is covering their face also can be seen as taking away their humanity so they playing the role of the lovers and that anyone can fill the space of either person. the walls and ceiling can be scene as a kind of framing of the painting making the feeling that the scene is staged even more apparent and the colors of the walls can be seen as a very vague metaphor for a stage. The back wall colored like its the outside world, the wall on the right like the red curtain in most theaters, and the more plain ceiling bringing home that this is just a room and not a strange world.