The lovers

We have been creating work based around the piece of art by Rene Magritte's called The lovers.

In a group discussion we talked about what this piece meant to us and the reasoning behind Magritte's choice to cover the faces of "the lovers." I believed that the muslin could be a metaphor for the suffocation of their relationship. Others thought it could be a visual barrier showing that their is something in the way or hindering their relationship.


It was interesting to see how everyone interpreted the piece in a different way and took what the believed they were seeing. I was intrigued to know that the artist had no reasoning for the covered faces and stated that the painting meant nothing. I have learnt that you can use non meaningful stimulus to create meaning. Not always do we need to set out a purpose and a message to our audience but instead let the audience take away individual meanings. However one thing i would ask is, is it really possible to create art that is non meaningful. I ask this question because personally i feel as actors and story tellers we are accustom to finding characters that we can latch onto and giving the audience a journey they can follow. So although we may say it means nothing i believe that overtime the more you work the piece the more you will begin to discover and the art you are creating will become more meaningful.  

Something that has exited me during this process is the concept of automatism (Automatism - The process of writing or creating art without conscious thought.) I have found a vast amount of creative freedom from allowing myself to create work from a natural, instinctual place and not letting the constrictions of my head get in the way. For example sometimes when we can be self concious or afraid of making mistakes and this stops us from creating work that is challenging and different, so using automatism is defiantly a skill i have learnt that will continue to use in he future.

"The Surrealists borrowed many of the same techniques to stimulate their writing and art, with the belief that the creativity that came from deep within a person’s subconscious could be more powerful and authentic than any product of conscious thought."

I would agree with this statement that using automatism allows a persons creativity to come from within the subconscious mind as supposed to the concious mind which comes with restrictions, the work i have created through the subconscious has been better and more powerful in my opinion then concious work therefore i definitely understand why the surrealists were empowered by this method of devising.

I like how the muslin takes away our identities and makes us blank canvas's. It also creates other meanings for the audience like control, being a number, ,hiding yourself etc.