Modernism, Magritte & The Problem Of Meaning

This is an advertisement by The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF.) The WWF is a organisation working on the research and restoration of the environment.

This advert is created to address the issue of climate change and draw our attention to how our every day habits are destroying the world as we know it.

Here the WWF have used a surrealist style, visibly transforming an individual's face to represent a fish. This is done to portray our negative effect we have on the environment. However cleverly, instead of showing the ill effects on the habitat, WWF have directly targeted the issue by placing a victim on the face of the character.




Rene Magritte was a Belgian surrealist artist, that challenged observants preconceptions of reality through his work. He emerged as an artist during the advertising boom of the 1920s by playing off the big industrial change of the time, which offered newly structured urban living. However advertising had added pressure to appeal to consumers during this post war era, as rationing was still a big issue. Rene dealt with this issue through means of connecting his copy and art work on the bases of surrealism to appeal to the consumers. With maybe the exception of the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali, whose creativity resembles Magritte's; no painter had a bigger impact on the advertising industry at the time.