On November 19th, we went to visit the MoMA. This was my first time visiting the MoMa so I was not sure what to expect when I got there. After getting settled, a group of us went to check out the Magritte exhibit, which features paintings by René Magritte from the year 1926 – 1938. As I read the description outside the exhibit, I was a bit curious as to what his style would look like. The description was that Rene Margritte developed key strategies and techniques to defamiliarize the familiar. It also said that he was a surrealist and how he wanted to overthrow what he saw as oppressive rationalism. When I first walked in I began to understand what they were talking about. I noticed many abstract paintings like people kissing with cloths over their heads, wooden planks, scenes and all different kinds of paintings. I also noticed a lot of paintings of dismembered human body parts and of people with certain features exaggerated. Another theme that I noticed was the display of many cut-up paintings. One example was L’ÉVIDENCE ÉTERNELLE, a portrait of a human body that was cut up into 5 different sections. According to the description, it was painted in 1930 and appeared in many early Surrealists exhibitions. “The fragmentation underscores the tendency of the human eye to focus selectively rather than comprehensively in its vision.” As I continued to explore the Margritte exhibit, I came across a painting that should be familiar to all of us. It was The Key of Dreams, which is also on the front cover of our book Ways of Seeing by John Berger. Embarrassingly though, at first I did not recognize or acknowledge it to be the same painting but after Professor Eversley approached me and pointed it out, I began to realized where I had seen that painting before. Overall, the exhibit was very interesting and for my first time ever coming to the MoMa, I was quite satisfied with what I saw tehre.