Blog Post #4

The picture I picked is from MoMA. Its name The Menaced Assassin by René Magritte. This is a painting described an event happen in a room. There are four furnitures in the room: a bed, a chair, and a desk with a gramophone on it. There are also several people in the paintings, 6 males were wearing the suit, and a naked girl. I guess this painting is described a kind of crime after 1877s. I guess that’s because these reasons.

First, there are two men who were standing on side of the entrance of the room. One of them who was standing on the left side was holding a wooden stick, and another one who was standing on the right side was holding a net. I think these two men were kidnapped that naked girl to this room.

Second, inside the room, there have 2 people, a naked girl lay on the bed, and she probably already died because her eyes were closed, and there was some blood bleeding out from her mouth. The man who was in the room, he put his overcoat and hat on the chair, then he was standing at the front of a gramophone, looking and listening to it. I think this man is the murder, because normally when people are working on some, they were taken off their overcoat and hat to make them feel more comfortable.

The Last one is the three men who were standing outside of the window, and look at the inside of the room. I think they represented that they have more member. They wearing the same suit represented they were organized.

Summarize all of stage set, I infer the painting is telling the store or event that these men were a criminal organization, they use a net catch a girl, and use a stick to stun her. Then they bring the girl to this room. I don’t know what was happening before this girl died, but I feel the these men were unfeeling, or maybe this kind of crime just normal for them. Especially the man in the room, the way he stands make me feel like this kind of crime for him like he just take a lunch, need some music to relax.

Note: I guess event was happening after 1877s because this is the year gramophone were invented.

The painting information from MoMA:
Painted for his first solo exhibition, in 1927, The Menaced Assassin is one of Magritte's largest and most theatrical compositions. Like many of the Surrealists, Magritte was an avid fan of the pre-World War I popular crime fiction series Fantômas; he borrowed the placement of the two detectives' figures flanking the doorframe from the Le Mort Qui Tue (The Murderous Corpse), a film from the series first released in 1913. It was Magritte's ambition to create a similarly immersive and fantastical world on the canvas, here made manifest in the unsolvable narrative of this enduringly mysterious painting.