About The Son of Man Perhaps the most well-known artwork of Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, The Son of Man is in fact a self-portrait. The man standing in an overcoat and a bowler hat is Magritte himself, but his face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple. However, the man’s eyes are visible, discreetly peeking over the edge of the apple.
Magritte said:
“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.”
René Magritte was one of the most famous surrealist painters of all time. His ability to challenge perception inspired many artists to come, such as Andy Warhol, Jan Verdoodt and Jasper Johns. Furthermore, his idiosyncratic vision of Surrealism has won over the hearts and minds of millions.
He worked across various media including painting, printmaking, sculpting, photography, and film. His depiction of normal, everyday objects rearranged in an unusual way allowed his viewers to take a deeper look at what was in front of them and realize what the image truly represented.
One of his most well-known pieces, The Treachery of Images exemplifies his ability to give new meanings to objects. It is an image of a pipe, and beneath it, a message that reads, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”).
This ability to make the mundane strange and the known unknown has solidified Magritte’s talents in the art world. Eventually, it has profoundly affected the Conceptualist and Pop Art movements, to this very day.
