René Magritte and The Son of Man

'The Son of Man' (1964) by René Magritte; Private Collection

I'm not very fond of Surrealist paintings. I actually forgot to do a post on Salvador Dalí, the greatest of the Surrealist painters, and now his date of birth and death have come and gone. I probably would have struggled to find a painting I like because I don't really like Dalí's paintings. I find them interesting though and there is always a lot to see and discover. So if I continue this blog next year, I might include him, just because I cannot ignore him really. But having said that, today's Surrealist Belgian painter René Magritte, born on 21 November 1898 and died on 15 August 1967, I do like. He displays ordinary objects in an unusual context. He was interested in the mystery of the visible everyday reality and wanted to create poetic imagery. His paintings are symbolic and often humorous. His early paintings were in the Impressionist style and in 1926, he made his first Surrealist painting, The Lost Jockey, and he held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Today´s painting The Son of Man is probably Magritte´s most famous work. Even if you wouldn´t know it was painted by Magritte, chances that you have seen this image before are high. About the painting Magritte himself said: ´At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It´s something that happens constantly. 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.´ (Quote: Wikipedia)