René Magritte
Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte was a master not only of the obvious, but of the obscure as well. In his artwork, Magritte toyed with everyday objects, human habits and emotions, placing them in foreign contexts and questioning their familiar meanings. He suggested new interpretations of old things in his deceivingly simple paintings, making the commonplace profound and the rational irrational. He painted his canvasses in the same manner as he lived his life -- in strange modesty and under constant analysis. Magritte was born in 1898 in the small town of Lessines, a cosmopolitan area of Belgium that was greatly influenced by the French. Twelve years later, Magritte, along with his parents and two younger brothers, moved to Châtelet, where the future artist studied sketching.
On vacations with his grandmother and Aunt Flora during the summer months, Magritte frequented an old cemetery at Soignies. In this cemetery, Magritte often played with a little girl, opening trap doors and descending into underground vaults. This experience would prove a great influence upon his later artwork, as wooden caskets and granite tombstones recur in many of his paintings. Magritte also developed a fascination with religion around this time, often dressing up as a priest and holding mock mass services in complete seriousness. In
1912, Régina Bertinchamp, Magritte's mother, committed suicide by drowning herself in the Sambre River. The night of her suicide, the
Magrittes followed Bertinchamp's footprints to the river, where they found her dead with her nightgown wrapped around her face. Magritte was 14 at the time. He would claim years later that his only recollection of his mother's death was his pride at being the center of attention and his subsequent identity formation as the "son of a dead woman." Some critics point out that several of the subjects in
Magritte's paintings are veiled in white sheets as a reference to his mother's suicide.
A year later, Magritte's father moved the family to Charleroi. It was in Charleroi that Magritte would meet his future wife Georgette Berger on a carousel at the town fair. However, the two would not see one another again until a chance meeting in Brussels years later. In
Charleroi, Magritte quickly lost interest in his studies and asked his father for permission to study at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in
Brussels. ...
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... Faubourg in Paris. The exhibition caused much scandal, but won few admirers.
Soon after, Magritte resigned to his original style, though he bitterly attributed this retroaction to his desire to please
Georgette, who preferred his earlier paintings.
He continued to acquire much success all over the world with paintings such as L'Empire des Lumières (The Empire of Lights, 1954), which employed standard Surrealist techniques and precise Magritte lines. On August 15, 1967, Magritte died in Brussels. Unlike many of his Surrealist counterparts, Magritte lived quite humbly and incon uously. He did not draw much attention to himself, and he lived life relatively uneventfully. Despite his unassuming lifestyle, though,
Magritte managed to leave an artistic legacy of transforming the ordinary into the fantastic. While some art historians attribute
Magritte's art to his desire to oppose and combat the triviality of everyday life, others suggest that his work goes beyond escapism and serves to reveal some of the murkier and complex aspects of the human condition. Whatever the impetus was for his art, it is certain that Magritte's works are at once hauntingly beautiful and deeply provocative.
Norbert Rillieux was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 17, 1806. His mother, Constance Vivant was a freed slave from New Orleans, and his father, Vincent Rillieux, was a inventor and engineer. Vincent invented the steam-operated cotton baling press. Norbert's academic talents were seen at an early age by his father, and was sent to Paris to be educated.
There are certain criteria that must be fulfilled in order for a nonfiction book to be successful. The two criteria that we should judge all argumentative nonfiction by are well written anecdotes that capture the reader’s attention and well explained factual data that proves the author’s point. The book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen contains both of these criteria and as such is a successful nonfiction book. Loewen’s purpose in writing Lies My Teacher Told Me is to correct the inaccuracies in textbooks and to help students learn the truth about history. He uses anecdotes that provide insight about history and data that easily proves his point about inaccuracies in textbooks to achieve his goal of helping students gain knowledge.
...ime of the author rather then accurate historical facts. (Lies?293) Textbooks are being written this way and history is being taught this way to show people how they should act and strive to be. This relays to the student what is deemed acceptable to everyone and what is not. When it comes to a student remembering historical lessons they normally do not remember what is being taught to them unless they are moved by it. (Lies?301) So what is the result to a society where our students are being taught this way? The number one result is that students do not know the true history of their country nor do they remember what they were taught in class. This is a sad conclusion but Mr. Loewen feels it is an accurate one given responses to questions he has asked his students throughout the years. What can we do to change this and reeducate the people out there? Sadly I feel nothing can be done for those of us out there who are not truly aware of this misinformed way of teaching. But, our children need not be sheltered from our true history, rather they should learn all that has happened so we can prevent the atrocities from reoccurring again.
School systems have become the domain of learning about our own cultures; it prescribes what we know and how we engage within the global sphere. By students attending School it is a way to intersect knowledge to the new generations to come. We use textbooks in schools to help facilitate the information that has been passed down through the years of progression. In order to understand ones heritage one needs to understand what occurred and how one came to be. Education has become a fundamental process in which all youths must obtain too in order to develop into a valued functioning member of society. Educators strive to educate youth in the history of their culture but the reality of the truth is that history is a false perception derived from years and year of colonization, white hierarchy. “Textbooks are very influential message senders in the formal kindergarten through 12th grade school systems in the United States. The realities of students reading these textbooks are shaped by the information printed, especially of things that are unfamiliar and unavailable to them” (Clark & Moore, 2004). Textbooks have in turn brought upon a false history and claims to what the truth really is, but whose truth is it, whose truth is dominant, colonial truth is dominant and textbooks within the school system provide false truths of history to back up colonial ways. Colonization is a continuing process within the school system by means of history textbooks; it is this book that claims to speak the truth but only one truth.
James Loewen’s, Lies My Teacher Told Me, criticizes the shortcomings of American education that is associated with inaccurate histories in textbooks. First, the fact that students do not have high regards when it comes to American history textbooks, proves how unreliable the education system is. In addition, textbooks are often to blame, because they are too dull, and are rather—boring (Loewen 384), which is why it has become a requirement for students to read books, because no one wants to read those uninteresting books. Even history textbooks, they cover redundant materials which make the subject more and more uninteresting to the students. It makes the students less motivated to learn. Moreover, he also argues that the problematic issues lie within the bureaucracy. They make the decisions on what the students will learn or which textbooks they will be reading. So far, they have not done a good job. At times, history textbooks were often censored and handpicked. It may even be completely different from the rest of the [history] textbooks. These censored textbooks, often keep the students in the dark when the controversial issues are removed (Loewen 389). It really undermines the freedom of speech and emphasizes that, often, key pieces are left out that is critical to the historical event, such as exemplifying that many of his college students have never even
Rene Descartes Once upon a time we were told that the earth was the center of the universe. The sun, moon, and all planets, even the unknown, were all revolving around our planet. We now look at that statement and wonder in amazement how our species could have pondered such a thought. Through advanced mathematics and persistently working to prove his theory, Rene Descartes transformed yet another one of these worldly assumptions and proved it all wrong. Rene Descartes Method of Doubt was simply his mathematical method of discovering the unanswered questions about the universe.
James W. Loewen wrote the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” to help students understand the past of the United States, and how it is effecting the present time. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” looks at 12 different American history textbooks, and points out the different lies, flaws, and sugar coated stories the textbooks present. Lowen explains how textbooks practice heroification, and how race and race relations are a major issue when it comes to American history. Among these topics, Lowen also sheds light on the truth about social classes in America, and how textbooks lie about the past and try to avoid the recent past all together.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone, 2007.
High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social life"(Lies p.4). Loewen blames this on the way that today's texts are written. This paper will compare one text, The American Pageant, to Lies.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Second. New York, New York: Touchstone, 1997. Print.
Rene Descartes was a 17th Century mathematician and French Philosopher whose life's work focused on providing a new prospective on the human perception of reality. The definition of this reality is seen as Descartes greatest life goal. Coined as the "Father of Modern Philosophy," (Cunningham & Reich, 2010, p. 385), Descartes laid the groundwork the philosophy and reality as we perceive it today. Descartes autobiography, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences (Descartes, 2004) shares with the reader a glimpse into the mind of a brilliant, yet frail, man who provided an in depth explanation on the perception of human existence and the reality we live in today. The works, shortened to Discourse on Method for the modern day, outlined in Cunningham & Reich (2010), focuses on Descartes's proof as to the existence of God and is the crux of his argument and stance on the reality of man.
René Descartes was born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye, France, which has been renamed after him, Descartes. He was the baby out of his three siblings. His mom named Jeanne Brochard had died before he turned one year old. His father, Joachim Brochard, a council member in the provincial parliament, sent his kids to live with their grandmother. The father left them with the grandmother while he himself remarried and enjoyed the bliss of not having children under his feet. He still was a stickler for a good education and having a legacy so he sent 8 year old Rene to the Jesuit college of Henri IV where he stayed until he was 15.
The rise in China from a poor, stagnant country to a major economic power within a time span of twenty-eight years is often described by analysts as one of the greatest success stories in these present times. With China receiving an increase in the amount of trade business from many countries around the world, they may soon be a major competitor to surpass the U.S. China became the second largest economy, last year, overtaking Japan which had held that position since 1968 (Gallup). China could become the world’s largest economy in decades.
As the first chapter in this long analytical book, chapter one serves as the foundation for the rest of the novel, with a basic premise that “history textbooks make fool out of the students.” It shows how portrayal of historical figures and events in the best light for the reputation of United States leads to biased and distorted historical education.
To better understand its meaning, transcendental idealism needs to be defined against other forms of idealism. Idealism, in general, is the claim that reality is dependent on the mind and their ideas, (Morrison). George Berkley, an early metaphysician that defended the views of idealism, presents a view of material idealism which claims that the existence of ...