Sheherazade, 1950
<a title="Sheherazade, 1950" href="http://www.mattesonart.com/Data/Sites/1/magritte/Sheherazade%201950.jpg">Sheherazade</a>, 1950
<p>Of the novels we read from the 20th Century in Europe, the most surrealist of them was <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> by Jean Rhys. This painting of Magritte's reminded me of the book because of how fragmented an identity can become. First, Annette is a piece of her mother, then a piece of the convent in which she resides, then a piece of her marriage, then a piece of Rochester's English manor. Annette, though telling her story through the words of Rhys, is constantly in fragments of her own identity. She is always missing something that makes her uniquely herself. </p>
<p>Annette's mother was known for her undying beauty, which is also something addressed in Magritte's painting. Just as Annette was reduced to being a piece of something else, so was her mother. Her mother was only able to be viewed as an object, like this painting of Magritte's implies, which makes Annette's identity even mroe fragmented.</p>
René Magritte
http://www.mattesonart.com/Data/Sites/1/magritte/Sheherazade%201950.jpg
Matteson Art
1950
oil on canvas
Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures
<a title="Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures" href="http://www.salvador-dali.org/dali/coleccio/en_50obres.php?ID=W0000236">Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures</a>
Like most other items in this collection, Dali's painting deals with the idea of identity and body. Dali leaves out bodies completely from this composition, which forces us to look at what makes identity that surrounds us. This can be directly related to the idea presented in Woolf's <em>Orlando</em>, since the argument can be made that Orlando's gender is simply a product of the environment surrounding her at the time. While she is male, the environment made her so, and while she is female, the environment also made her so.
Salvador Dali
Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
1936
Oil on cardboard
painting
The Wonders of Nature (Les Merveilles de la nature), 1953
The Wonders of Nature (<a title="Wonders of Nature" href="http://moreart4all.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/05-rene-magratte-mca.jpg">Les Merveilles de la nature</a>), 1953
This painting by Magritte, who is one of the most well-known and influential surrealists, deals with body image and identity. As we are connecting novels to higher art forms, this particular piece made me think of <em>Orlando</em> by Virginia Woolf. One cannot actually tell if the fish people are male or female, though it is likely there is one male and one female, but regardless of this, they appear to be in love. <em>Orlando</em> deals with the importance of gender in being a part of the human experience, so these two seemed very linked.
René Magritte
1953
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago: Gifted by Joseph and Jory Shapiro, 1982
Oil on canvas