The Future of Statues

Born in 1898, Rene Magritte is a Belgian surrealist artist whose fame arose from the great artistic presentations he made through paintings.

His work, although drafted many years ago, remains a powerful message to the world and its relevance continues to be echoed even today. One of his most popular art works includes ‘The Future of Statues’, in which he made several presentations depicting the world in different contexts.

The he made the work from commercial plaster highlighting the death mask of Napoleon, a French Emperor. Fellow surrealist and friend of Magritte, Paul Nouge, described this work as having an association between the sky, death and dreams.

Most of the works Rene Magritte did were thought provoking and this was no exception as it came as part of one of his best attempts to portray messages through art. Although most of his pieces of art seem to have ordinary objects, Magritte was able to pass a strong message through the simplest methods possible. His context came as an unusual view of the world and in a manner that would leave the audience asking more questions. Basically, his work was meant to challenge the preconditioned view most people have about reality and life in general. Through his skills at imagery, Rene Magritte has to date remained a big inspiration in the development of pop, conceptual and minimalist art.

The earliest paintings Magritte made were impressionistic and his work featured in the public as early as 1915. Between 1916 and 1918, Rene Magritte joined the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts for his studies in art, but in the course of learning he found most of the instruction given uninspiring. He, therefore, focused on creating art that is inspired by futurism, something that later led to production of The Future of Statues.

Initially, there were many critics of his art but this did not stop him from pursuing his dream. After making no impact in Paris, despite living there for a long period of time, Magritte relocated to Brussels in 1930 and started working in advertising. It is during this period that he also met with Edward James, a renowned British surrealist, who allowed him to live in his home free of charge so he could pursue his passion in surreal art.