Born in Lecien, Belgium, Magritte (1898-1967), after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, worked in a wallpaper factory and until 1926 was a poster and advertising designer, in the late 1920s Magritte settled in Paris, where he came into contact with members of the Surrealist movement and soon became one of the most influential artists of the group, returning to Brussels a few years later to open an advertising agency, after the first exhibition in New York in 1936, Magritte's reputation is already solid,
New York then became the site of two of his most important retrospectives— at the Museum of Modern Art in 1965 and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992. The Human Condition is one of many versions of Magritte's paintings on the same subject, representing the style he created in the 1930s, when he was still influenced by Surrealism, in which Magritte created multiple visual illusions in which he displayed a real landscape in front of an open window,
He makes the images of the paintings perfectly match the "real" landscapes of the outdoors. Magritte's composition is intended to show that the connection between nature and what it presents in the only picture is achieved by artistic means, and this painting also proves the artist's ability to reproduce nature at will, proving that the boundaries between indoor and outdoor, object and subject, reality and imagination are vague and without clear boundaries.
Also in the 20th century, Doreza Tanning (1910-2012) became a painter inspired by Magritte's 1936 exhibition Of Illusions: Dadaism and Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at the age of 30, the female painter Tanning painted a semi-nude self-portrait of "Birthday", according to her memoirs, she often bought second-hand clothes, this mess of purple jackets is a Shakespeare costume.
Tanning's "Birthday"
Paired with the brown skirt of the branches, she resembles a strange bird, and if you look closely, you will find that the branches contain human bodies, the door is opened hard, and there may be uninvited guests entering at any time, and at her feet is an unusual combination of creatures, adding an ominous atmosphere, this irrational factor constantly appears in her work, and this scene is disturbing, like any dream, both strange and familiar,
Tanning's "Friend's Room"
Tanning's early work focused on the awakening and dreams of adolescence, with the bed, mirror, and table all familiar symbols. In the painting "The Room of Friends", they form three points of composition, and a strange set of double images around them are constructed. The whole scene is surrounded by dim light, textile patterns and glass mirrors, an unnatural light source illuminates the room from the left, and the girl on the bed lies with a severed doll,
The accompanying the foreground is a mirror image of her transfiguration, and the dwarf in denim spur boots has an ambiguous mirror image of a headscarf in the background, and this pairing is also echoed by two pairs of hard-boiled eggs, the painting is about the view of awakening and self — the egg represents the eye, in the surreal word, which is a traditional symbol of rebirth and awakening, the combination is blind, but the girl sees herself: she has realized that she has grown from a girl to a woman.