English presentation about the links between Magritte's artworks and Shakespeare's plays.

1. Shakespeare's works through
art
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and The Tempest

2. RenéMagritte
TheLoversII–1928
oiloncanvas
RomeoandJuliet

3. This is the second version of Magritte's
"The Lovers", situated in the Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
As we can clearly see, the two subjects are
covered in white sheets, which are a
recurring element in the artist's works.

4. The focal point of the scene are a man and a
woman, both dressed to the nines, her chin up as
they kiss sweetly, but with white blankets hiding
their heads.
The artist only used a few, lowly saturated colours:
red, as a symbol of love and passion, and black and
white, attributable to death and mourning. These
colours result in a weird feeling of uncertainty
inside the viewer.

5. This image is a symbolic represention of the
impossibility to communicate; their love is
mute and it lacks of dialogue, which is the
reason why they are about to die, and why I
think this artwork better represents Romeo
and Juliet's tragedy: the two lovers who died
because they couldn't communicate.

6. RenéMagritte
Thedoublesecret–
1927,oiloncanvas
Hamlet

7. Located in the Centre Georges Pompidou, museum
of modern art in Paris, this rather creepy artwork
shows us a weird human figure in the foreground, a
man or more probably a wax statue. Its
umperturbed face is ripped, leaving the inside
uncovered and showing us humid and gloomy walls
filled with rattles.
At last, behind the mysterious figure, there's a sea
in the background.

8. The meaning of this curious portrait can be
found in Magritte's past, when his mother
committed suicide as he was just a child,
hence it could represent his secret trauma.
Generally speaking, it's the hidden truth of
someone's life, and we perfectly know the
secrets of Shakespeare's character "Hamlet".

9. With the murder of his father, King
Hamlet, and the resulting secret attempt
to avenge him, I believe in this work of art
as a valiant representation of the tragedy.

10. RenéMagritte
Thecastleofthe
Pyrenees–1959,oilon
canvas
TheTempest

11. This well known Magritte's oil on canvas, which is
believed to be inspired by Laputa, from Gulliver's
Travels, is situated in the Israel Museum,
in Jerusalem.
It shows an odd scenery, in which the subject is a
huge cliff, floating above a stormy sea, and yet the
sky seems quite calm. On the awe-inspiring grey
rock stands an unidentified castle.

12. In spite of the many meanings that the critic finds in
this astonishing artwork, we can say without any doubt that
it also symbolizes lonliness and imprisonment; as a matter
of fact, this unusual landscape certainly doesn't remind us
of freedom, and, in The Tempest, we could say that
Prospero and Miranda are "prisoners" on the island.
Moreover, the contrast between the steady rock and the
threatening sea resembles the conflict between Prospero
and Caliban, in which the protagonist is the still cliff while
the antagonist is the storm; furthermore, the picture
perfectely links to the topic of magic, a central theme in
Shakespeare's famous play.

13. MartinaForte
5B