What is visible is also hidden. Our seeing, our vision, our outlook is at times, paradoxically, the very thing that binds us and blinds us from noticing what is beyond the surface. We humans are at times limited by our experiences and our individualistic way of thought. Our reasoning which can always be influenced by others is a critical element to our blindness if we are not sure in why we feel, think and confirm things to be what they are. These ideas have been up for arguments and scientific research for many centuries, from Greek Philosophers and psychologists to anthropologists have sought to determine what is and what is. Moral judgements, reasoning, and intuition have been the subjects of discussion.
The numbers of studies on concepts of the mind are endless. Artists have also taken their approach to such extents of creating paintings that attempt to relay the messages and the answers to some of mans/womans hardest and or most interesting questions. The visual concepts of such artists like René Magritte, forces the seer, the looker, to battle with trying to see the visible which is hidden and the visible which is present. Such a contradicting statement, but life, in my opinion is somewhat contradicting. Just think about the relationship between the mind and the heart, how contradicting are they? The two embody one vessel and at times are divided when moral and or immoral decisions are need to be made or justified. There is so much that the eye can see beyond the surface of an object or a concept. Is Magritte attempting to answer questions or give his interpretation on Adam & Eve and mans sin through the bite of an apple? Or is he trying to show a deeper relation of how people are only able to see the surface of things and or concepts and battle with seeing things past what is fairly visible?
The Son Of Man (1964) by René Magritte
René Magritte says of his painitng, “At least it hides the face partly well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.” – René Magritte
Written by Elissa Joe Granger