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, as World War II raged, he emerged as a subversive intellectual—one who envisioned a world far brighter than the one he was doomed to live in.
In his painting 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), a story that follows hunters through a pitch-black forest where they grapple with anxiety, danger, and exhaustion.
Although The Huntsmen at the Edge of Night isn’t meant to illustrate the narrative written by Magritte’s friend and patron, Camille Goemans, the parallels are unmistakable. Two hunters are cornered. Who is closing in?
At the time, Fascism was on the rise in Europe. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had already deployed his Blackshirts to seize trains and public buildings. Was Magritte feeling anxious about the shifting political landscape? Who wouldn’t be?
Is it real or a ruse?
When I look at a photograph, I usually take its veracity for granted. Conversely, Magritte spent much of his life warning us that images can intentionally betray the truth.
Look closely at the two paintings he calls The Human Condition. Are you certain the image on the easel reflects the view outside the window? Is that stately tree really there? Might a frigate be making its way through those peaceful ocean waves?
Magritte used the painting-within-a-painting format to illustrate how easily we make false assumptions. We assume his background landscape is real, while the canvas on the easel is a mere representation. While in fact, the canvas in front of the window 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, modern image-editing software is generating an avalanche of manipulated images. Toxic people are relentlessly diminishing our world with minimal effort. Are we rising to the challenge? Asking for Magritte.
Surrealism in turbulent times
One of Magritte’s most prescient images, The Black Flag, 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 that 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 veils impart meaning to a painting that would be unremarkable otherwise. Is love blind? Absolutely. But that interpretation feels too simplistic for Magritte.
Is this image a meditation on the impossibility of ever truly knowing another person? Or is Magritte using a layer of fabric to turn passion into frustration? Unfulfilled longing is a recurring theme in his work.
In The Lovers II, the same couple appears to be posing for a photograph. We still don’t know who they are. How well do they know themselves?
Longing for 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?
Magritte uses “poetic license” to give the elements in this scene a joyfully new power. Even the title Empire of Light feels less like a literal 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 immediately evident, but Magritte’s work has a formal quality. You see it in every choice he makes, from the elements he selects to the meticulous way he combines them. How he moves from initial concept to finished painting is what defines the quality of his art.
Stoking the popular imagination
When it comes to visual riddles, Magritte has no equal. Accordingly, his influence on modern iconography and how we interpret everyday images remains 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 humanity’s struggles. Regarding the painting Golconda, he said, “The ruined city of Golconda was once a 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.
Postscript: If you happen to be near Naples, Florida…
Explore The Surrealist International: Fifty Years of Dreams at the Baker Museum from October 17, 2026 — February 14, 2027. The exhibition includes works by familiar artists such as Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Dora Maar, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Dorothea Tanning, as well as some whose work deserves to be better known.