The Treachery of Images (1929)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
A painted tobacco pipe above the words "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe)
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
Art
René Magritte
1898–1967 · Belgian
Surrealism
René Magritte was the leading Belgian Surrealist, famous for painting everyday objects in a flat, deadpan, almost advertising-like style but placing them in impossible situations. His witty visual paradoxes about images, words and reality made him one of the most widely reproduced artists of the 20th century.
How to spot them
- ▸Men in bowler hats and dark overcoats, often seen from behind or with faces hidden (e.g. by a green apple)
- ▸Crisp, calm, realistic painting of ordinary things — pipes, apples, clouds, windows, curtains — made strange by impossible combinations
- ▸Paradoxes of day and night or inside and outside: a night-time street under a bright daytime sky; a painting on an easel that merges with the view through a window
- ▸Words that contradict the image, most famously the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"
Key works
The Son of Man (1964)
Private collection
Self-portrait of a man in a bowler hat and overcoat whose face is hidden by a floating green apple
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
Golconda (1953)
Menil Collection, Houston
Dozens of near-identical bowler-hatted men hang in the air like raindrops in front of apartment houses
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
The Empire of Light (1940s–1960s)
Several versions (e.g. MoMA, New York; Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice)
A dark street lit by a lamp at night beneath a bright blue daytime sky with white clouds
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
Time Transfixed (1938)
Art Institute of Chicago
A steaming locomotive charges out of a domestic fireplace beneath a mantel clock
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
The Lovers (1928)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Two lovers kiss with their heads wrapped in white cloth
No free image available (likely still in copyright) · see it on Wikipedia
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Lessines, Belgium, in 1898; died in Brussels in 1967
- •His mother drowned herself in the River Sambre in 1912, when he was 13 — often linked to the cloth-covered faces in his work
- •He earned a living for years as a commercial artist, designing wallpaper, posters and advertisements
- •Lived near Paris from 1927 to 1930, where he mixed with André Breton's Surrealist circle
- •The Treachery of Images inspired Michel Foucault's essay "This Is Not a Pipe"
- •A Magritte painting of a green apple inspired the Beatles' Apple Records logo
- •The Magritte Museum opened in Brussels in 2009 as part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
- •A version of The Empire of Light sold at Christie's New York in 2024 for about $121 million, his auction record
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — René Magritte
- Art Institute of Chicago — La durée poignardée (Time Transfixed)
- Wikipedia — René Magritte