ART OF THE DAY PRESENTATION LING PAN PERIOD: 01

THE DOUBLE SECRET BY RENE MAGRITTE Artist: Rene Magritte Completion date: 1927 Place of Creation: Paris, France Style: surrealism Period: Surrealism Paris years Genre: symbolic painting

A person’s head detached from it’s face. Intricate tubes and nodes are physical mechanism The eyes is looking into nowhere.

Mixed color of blue and green. Yellowish skin tone. The inside filled with dark brown and black.

no source of light in the painting. Light shines on the face. The tubes and nodes are reflecting the light. There are shadows inside the person.

The perspective of the creator is looking from the right. The mechanicals are filled in the body.

The sky and the sea are horizontally symmetrical, and the man’s body and his face are vertically symmetric to each other. Behind the person.

The body is in the middle of the painting.

The man is in the sea.

Character: The painting shows a person’s head detached from its face. By showing the tubes and nodes under the face Magritte indicates the secrets which the person is hiding inside himself. The broken human has no gender, which portrays that the human is representing everyone who hides their true self under their expression(s). The intricate tubes and nodes are physical mechanism illustrate that the man is like a machine which has no feelings. The nodes and the tubes dehumanize the person and illustrate the man is lifeless. The face is detached from its body suggest that the true self and character are being revealed. The human has a dull look, he is looking into no where illustrates the unwillingness of facing the truth and reality. The man is trying to escape from the society’s opinions (reality). At the same time accepting the truth of his dehumanized character that he has been hiding inside himself. Color: Rene Magritte uses turbid colors to create this paint which shows the unclearness to the world. The light colors are mixed with dark color. The used of mixed color illustrate that the person is shaped by the society in a negative way. The sea and the sky are both mixes with green and blue, and it makes the man standout by the light color. Green and blue both symbolize depression, but the color yellow makes the person look more vigorous, however inside the person is filled with black and dark brown, this suggests that the man is pretending on the outside and providing a mask to hide the fact that he is mechanically made. Light: Magritte light up the secret which the man is trying to hide away from the society. The lights symbolize the others opinion toward the society, and the society has impacted on the human himself, and the shadows represent the person's thought and character. There is no source of the light in the painting shows that people didn't directly state their opinions publicly but the person still receives their ideas. The light indicates that the society is not evil or bad, the only way to get effect from it is based on how people react to the opinion in the society. The mechanics inside the human are the result of how the society builds some people into. The lightest part and the darkest part of the painting are placed together to show the contrast between them. The inner sides of the person are the darkest, which hints that he wants to hide the secrets. The light indicates the fact that all the secrets will be shown to the society regardless, which linked to the idea that things will not always turned out the way that people want. The secret of the human has been revealed to the society by force, which has been shown with the face that comes with the irregular crack. Angle: The physical perspective of the creator is looking for the right, this makes the person more standout from the background, representing that the person is being revealed and observed by the society. Half of the person’s body was not shown to the viewer, but from this angle people can see that the nodes and the tubes are filled up the body, which emphasizes the significance of the mechanism in humans. This illustrates lifeless and robotic character that the society has turned people into. Proportion: In this painting everything is equally spaced out. The sky and the sea are horizontally symmetrical, and the man’s body and his face are vertically symmetric to each other. Magritte uses this art technique to reveal the equality that balance the world, and he wants to show there are positive and negative ideas existing in the society. The only part that didn’t go with this technique is the wooden wall that lies behind the person, indicating that it is a positive presence in the paint. The wooden wall is behind the person make the painting stronger overall, this illustrates that the wall is actually balancing the painting by giving the man a shelter. Placement: Magritte chooses to place the man in the center of the painting, because this attracts people’s attention to the unusual mechanical inside the person. People often judge a someone based on their appearance, but they often don’t try to understand a person’s inner feeling. When a person’s outside has been broken by others, leading the machinery character being revealed into the society, people would understand how their words could change a person into a machine. Setting: The man is in the sea. Magritte chooses the sea as the background because there is no lands, and that shows that the person is alone under people’s opinions, there is no one on his side. Back in 1927 the water traveling is still encountering as a dangerous transporting, in the painting the person is alone in the sea. It hints that people are easy to lost and being misguided in the world and as they receive he judgement which ends up leading to people losing their faith as well as the original characteristic.