Rene Magritte - artist.

For pure fun and joy the surreal artist Rene Magritte is 'hat and shoulders' above the rest. On Channel 4 on Sunday night Will Young introduced his favourite artist to us in The Man in the Hat - Rene Magritte. He had an interesting way of seeing the world from a philosophical point of view. Magritte claimed not from a psychoanalytic or  "unconscious one". Magritte (1899-1967) was born in Belgium - in pub quizzes an often question is - who is the most famous Belgium? There is it is said only one - Magritte. His mother suffered from severed depression and killed herself by drowning when he was only 13. He says this didn't have a big impact on his life, but his pictures tell a different story. He loved going to the local picture house and watching silent movies. One artist that made a big impression on him was Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978). He loved his different way of viewing the world. In 1927 Magritte had his first exhibition in Paris. Magritte liked taking ordinary everyday objects like a pipe, then painting them saying "this is not a pipe". He enjoyed the contradiction, the frisson this created in the viewer. He returned to Belgium in 1930. In 1936 he came to London and enjoyed his time here, having a bowler hat made for him by the famous makers Lock & Co, Hatters of St James's Street, London. He died in his own country of pancreatic cancer in August 1967, now a famous artist.