The Art Institute of Chicago is holding an exhibit of René Magritte, a 20th century Belgian surrealism artist. The exhibit has almost a hundred pieces of art on display, including paintings, sculptures, photographs and books.

Magritte was a great influence to many artists and majorly impacted the development of surrealism art. He is well known for his use of ordinary objects in unusual situations.

The show is in order from Magritte’s early work to his later, more developed pieces, starting with a sculpture of Napoleon’s head painted blue with white clouds covering his face. The first few rooms display his experimentations with paper cutting and illustrations of detective stories that he enjoyed.

Almost all of his works include something out of the ordinary. One of his more famous paintings is a picture of a pipe with a French sentence translating to, “This is not a pipe.”

Magritte liked to use common objects and put them in a setting that we would usually not see them. For example, he would paint a couple kissing, which is common, except he would add a bag over each of their heads.

His thoughts behind his works are to invoke thoughts from viewers to view everyday objects and situations in a different perspective.

The exhibit ends on Oct. 13. I would definitely recommend anybody who is interested in art to see Magritte’s exhibit as it is very inspirational and thought provoking.