Ceci n’est pas rouge
Inspired by René Magritte's painting
The Lovers. René Magritte, 1928
/ Rene Magritte and the psychological dimensions of facial elimination /
It's true that surrealism arose as a reaction to the First World War, that it's endeavor was to face a man with an absurdity in effort to save him from banalizing his life. But in every personal expression, as well as Magritte's, it's possible to discern these specifics and see the marks of creator's life. This is a field of psychoanalytic study and an effort to find out the relationships and meanings with those "today" and those of "then."
When he was under 14, his mother committed suicide by drowning in the river. It's more than clear that such difficult life events are impregnated in the psyche in the form of a severe trauma. In the lifetime when a person is still being formed, such a seal certainly will, in some way direct the life, personal preoccupations, and general vision, as well as the experience of the world and its own place in it.
A very common motive in Magritte's opus is facial elimination. Probably his most famous painting is the Son of Man, which, unlike the Great War, portrays a male figure, but again the characteristic features, the 'visibility' of the son of a man are absent.
/Deep psychological interpretation could be approached from several angles./
In Magritte's opus, so much marked with inability to be seen, certainly introduces the idea of blindness. His significance in intraphecal dimensions was also considered by Freud in his publications of Oedipus complex, where blindness is interpreted as a symbolic equivalent of castration as a punishment for those who seek intestinal intimacy with the mother figure. Given the extremely aggressive and unlucky death of his mother at age of fourteen, it's clear that such relationship is causing numerous conflicts that are very difficult to solve in a more mature adult age.
