For a long time, my knowledge of Belgian surrealist René Magritte was limited to just one thing: I understood that he lived during a jittery time. Even more jittery than ours.
While studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, he witnessed the massive destruction of World War I. Two decades later, during World War II, he emerged as a prominent, subversive intellectual capable of imagining a far brighter world than the one he was doomed to live in.
In The Huntsmen at the Edge of Night, Magritte portrays two hunters in a state of panic, groping at a wall, looking for a way out. Somber tones of brown, black, and green dominate the color palette.
That same year, French author Camille Goemans published a story called Les Débuts d’un Voyage (The Beginning of the Journey). The story follows hunters through a pitch-black forest where they grapple with anxiety, danger, and exhaustion.
The Huntsmen at the Edge of Night isn’t meant to illustrate the narrative written by Goemans, Magritte’s friend and patron. But the parallels are unmistakable. Two hunters are cornered. Who is closing in?
At the time, Fascism was on the rise in Europe. In Italy, Benito Mussolini had already deployed his Blackshirts to seize trains and public buildings. Is Magritte feeling anxious about the shifting political landscape? And can you blame him?
Real or a ruse?
When I look at a photograph, I usually take its veracity for granted. Magritte, however, spent much of his life warning us that images can betray the truth.
Look closely at the two paintings he calls The Human Condition. Are you sure the image on the easel reflects the view outside the window? Is that stately tree actually there? Might a frigate be making its way through the peaceful ocean waves?
Magritte uses this picture-within-a-picture format to illustrate how easily we make false assumptions. We assume his painting is real, while the canvas on the easel is a mere representation. In truth, the painting within a painting depicts a depiction.
We “know” that if we moved the easel, the view through the window would be the same as the one shown on the painting-within-a-painting. But of course we cannot “know” this. The sense of slippage between image and object is one of the sources of modern disquiet.
Art critic Robert Hughes, “The Shock of the New,” 1991
Today, the widespread availability of image-editing software is creating an avalanche of false images. Vile people are making the world worse with minimal effort. Are we rising to the challenge? Asking for Magritte.
Surrealism in turbulent times
The Black Flag, one of Magritte’s most prescient images, shows pilotless aircraft controlled by unseen forces. The overall impression is one of a mechanical menace hovering over the planet like a flock of sinister birds.
Does The Black Flag evoke the tragic day in 1937 when German planes bombed the Spanish town of Guernica, killing or injuring a third of its residents? Or does it foreshadow the horrific events Mussolini and Hitler unleashed during World War II?
Crucially, Magritte wouldn’t be Magritte if the painting didn’t include at least one truly puzzling element—like that flying window with curtains.
Elements almost always appear in Magritte’s pictures that present a sharp contrast to each other, thereby triggering a shock which shakes the intellect out of its apathy and sets one to thinking.
Belgian philosopher Marcel Paquet, 1992
The man loves riddles
In The Lovers, Magritte portrays a man and a woman kissing through opaque veils that hide their identities.
The cinematic framing of the scene offers scant information: a couple embraces near a featureless building; a storm brews in the background.
The white veils impart meaning to a painting that otherwise would be unremarkable. These bizarre shrouds raise questions. Is love blind? Absolutely. But that interpretation feels too simplistic for Magritte.
Is the image a meditation on the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person? Or is the artist using a layer of fabric to turn passion into frustration? Unfulfilled longing is a recurring theme in Magritte’s work.
In The Lovers II, the couple appears to be posing for a photograph. We still don’t know who they are—leaving me to wonder how well they even know themselves.
The long journey home
Most of the elements in a Magritte painting are so commonplace, they could be lifted straight out of a children’s vocabulary book: sky, tree, house. The artist combines ordinary things in unusual ways to make poetry visible.
In Empire of Light, the house lights have been extinguished, save for a single room on the second floor. Are the residents about to tumble into bed? If so, why is the sky such a bright blue?
In reality, Magritte is using “poetic license” to give certain elements in the scene a joyfully new power. Even the title Empire of Light feels less like a description and more like a fantasy fulfilled.
I think the best title is a poetic title that is compatible with the emotions we feel when we’re looking at a painting. The poetic title has nothing to teach us; instead, it has the power surprise and enchant us.
Artist René Magritte, from a note found in his wife’s possession
It may not be obvious at first, but Magritte’s work has a formal quality. You see it in every choice he makes—from the elements he selects to how meticulously he combines them. The way he moves from concept to finished painting determines the quality of his art.
Stoking the popular imagination
When it comes to visual riddles, Magritte has no equal. Accordingly, his influence on images and how we interpret them is widespread. For example, his painting The False Mirror inspired the CBS eye logo. His painting The Son of Man inspired the Beatles’ Apple Records logo.
Is The Son of Man a self-portrait? Maybe. During a 1960s radio interview, Magritte said, “The man in the bowler hat is Mister Average in his anonymity. I wear a bowler hat. I have no great desire to stand out from the masses.”
Indeed, Magritte was no stereotypical Surrealist weirdo. He was happily married to Georgette Berger for 45 years and preferred to paint while wearing a business suit. His power lies in the ability to create visual poetry out of human turmoil.
About the painting Golconda, he said, “The ruined city of Golconda was once a busy and wealthy Indian town, something like a wonder. I consider it a wonder that I can walk through the sky on the earth.”
Magritte’s simplicity is complicated
Why even paint like this?
In the jargon of today, Magritte is a disruptor. He uses art to challenge our perceptions. He forces us to rethink our understanding of the world and its true nature.
His images as stories first, paintings second. But unlike Academic artists, he doesn’t depict important moments in world history. He shows us life’s ambiguities, expressed in witty and thought-provoking ways.
“Everything we see conceals something else,” warned Magritte, a talented draftsman whose surreal body of work reflects an entire generation’s shattered hope for rational human progress.
