In continuation with my post from 2 weeks ago, the MoMA is still on for topic of discussion! This time I will be talking about the fifth floor of the MoMA, which is titled Painting and Sculpture I and showcases pieces of art work dated between the 1880s-1940s.

For the Painting and Sculpture I series, I visited The Frances and John L. Loeb Gallery. While looking at all the different pieces of artwork, I came across an artist by the name of Rene Magritte. He was a Belgian surrealist artist. One of his paintings had a very fascinating meaning behind it. It was called “The False Mirror” and it was oil on canvas. It is a painting of an eye with no eyelashes, and where the color of the eye should be is the sky with clouds instead. This was a painting that had a little description next to it to inform the viewer the purpose behind what the artist’s intentions were.

The meaning behind the huge eyelash-less eye was that when the viewer looks at the painting they are looking through the eye like a mirror, but also when you switch your focus, you are looking at the actual eye itself. It was said that since a mirror gives you a reflection of what you are looking at, the eye is still selective in what it wants to see.

While looking up a lot of Magritte’s artwork online, I realized that he does a few paintings with the blue sky background and clouds, showing that your eye looks beyond the painting but also looks at what is up close in the foreground. And I feel that this is a powerful message because when you are analyzing a piece of artwork you need to look past the surface of the painting.  By looking past everything, it helps to get to the message or the idea behind what the artist was going for.

Looking at Magritte’s paintings was an inspiration because it taught me the importance of having meaning behind my artwork, both for myself and for the viewers of my artwork.