NOW YOU SEE IT...
Trust Google to celebrate the birthday of Rene Magritte, one the iconic surrealist painters of the 20th century, and a personal favorite, with the stylized Google logo on the left.
The logo of course refers to Magritte's famous Son of Man (1964) painting, which is described in Wikipedia as:
"The Son of Man (French: Le fils de l'homme) is a 1964 painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.
Magritte painted it as a self-portrait.
The painting consists of a man in a suit and a bowler hatsea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple.
However, the man's left eye can be seen peeking over the edge of the
apple. Another subtle feature is that the man's left arm appears to
bend backwards at the elbow.
About the painting Magritte said,
- "At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the
apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of
the person. It's something that happens
constantly.
- Everything we see
hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we
see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible
does not show us.
- This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.[1]"
One of my favorite twists on the Son of Man painting was in the classic 1999 remake of the Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.
Thanks to YouTube, here's a clip of the roughly 7 minute heist at the movie's end, complete with great music by Nina Simone (spoiler alert of course if you haven't seen the movie, or plan to some time soon).
Great movie, and I'd also recommend the 1968 original with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, another classic.
Thanks Google for wishing a great painter a Happy Birthday.
Yay Magritte. Love him. He was the subject of my thesis.
Posted by: Chiki | Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 08:54 AM