The Birth of the Idol

Rene Magritte did the Birth Of The Idol in 1926 while in his hometown Brussels, Belgium. This figurative painting measured 80 x 120 centimeters. It was one the artworks that he did just as he began his career, a period he referred to as the Surrealist Paris years.

The Birth Of The Idol was one of the thought-provoking and witty images that the writer had become known for. Magritte’s pieces or artworks, just like The Birth Of The Idol were known to be challenging the preconditioned reality perceptions of the observers by depicting normal items into a sort of unusual context. As in the case of The Birth Of The Idol, Rene had continually delineated the jockey and particularly the bilboquet just as he had done with most of his artworks. Here, he added another form of dummy or mannequin, which had been initially, used Giorgio de Chirico’s pieces of artworks. This was a true indication that the legendary painter Giorgio de Chirico still had a great impact to other painters who were upcoming by then. The Birth Of The Idol was done almost ten years after the great innovations that de Chirico introduced to the world of painting.

In this beautiful image, a tempestuous sea is portrayed and a storm above it. The Belgian painter showcased here an expressive power was rare in those times and even later. There are also other elements that are seen in the picture. These include a blind staircase that has openings all over. The idol is then portrayed as rising in the humid scene just in the form of an ugly dummy from a human being’s cut-out profile. The Birth Of The Idol and the Lost Jockey have something in common. They are a true indication of how artistic and fertile Rene’s imaginations had grown in the year 1926.

Given the emotional stress and changing moods that he was undergoing since finding his new path by a form of revelation, this painter had encountered an excitement and a nervous unrest a young talent would undergo in a new industry. That is one thing that was evident in the two pieces of artworks he did in the year 1926. The Birth Of The Idol was one of the two pieces he had painted that year.