If you haven’t seen this painting, you’ve probably seen a parody of this painting- a man in a bowler hat with pretty much anything over his face (Cue your mom joke).
This piece is weird- it’s part of the surrealistic movement, which you might remember from my previous post about Dali and the Persistence of Memory. For those who don’t want to take the time to click on the link above, the surrealistic movement is just a bunch of paintings done from around the 1920’s to the 1960’s with the goal to paint things that couldn’t happen in real life, realistically.
So here we have “The Son of Man,”- a dude standing in a pretty freakin’ sweet trench and bowler hat, hanging out by the most boring coastline in history with a floating apple over his face.
He looks bored out of his freaking mind.
So, like all surrealistic paintings, the audience is left to think: “What in the living hell does that mean?” Also, can we just address that I feel like surrealistic artists are largely to blame for this:
Let’s take a look at René, who painted the man behind the apple.
René, pronounced “Wren- Ay,” was born in Belgium in 1898, which is the year before my great grandmother was born, so I find that grounding. Sometimes it’s so easy to separate ourselves from time and place. Speaking of time and place- don’t you love Magritte’s above quote?
René grew up in a middle class family, but tragedy struck when he was only 13 years old. His mother committed suicide. She had tried to run away and commit suicide before, but her husband, René’s father, tried to combat this by locking her inside the house. She managed to get out and was missing for more than a week before she was found a mile down the river, drowned.
Naturally, René was hit hard by this event. He found comfort in books, music, and painting, which he began in the Impressionistic style. This would have been fairly standard for the time. A year after his mother died, he met the ever-lovely Georgette and they eventually married. They stayed happily married for the rest of their lives to one another.
Often described as bourgeois, in all senses of the word, financial stability was important to René. He wanted to give Georgette a peaceful, comfortable life. In order to make ends meet, René turned to the commercial arts, as many Fine Artists (COUGH graphic design COUGH) do.
Listen here lady, don’t you be making fun of graphic arts. There’s nothing wrong with Graphic Arts.
I believe you’re the only one who mentioned anything being wrong with Graphic Arts.
He worked in advertising, design, the wallpaper industry, and more. His paintings never gained much popularity or success, which is rather funny considering The Son of Man and The Treachery of Images (below) are two symbols of Surrealism.
The Son of Man is a self portrait of René that he created the year after he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer.
He had long been fascinated by the idea of things existing in hidden places- that even if your face is covered by an apple, you still (hopefully) have a face. And people may know that you have a face, but they would have no idea what that face looks like in that moment, as it exists behind something else that you’re seeing. The thing you want to see is hidden by what you actually see. He used this idea many times in his works, so this painting isn’t the only one where he explores this idea. He has one where his face is covered with a dove. He has a pair of lovers, called les Amants (the lovers), but their faces are covered in cloth.
People look at this painting and guess so many things- “maybe it is talking about Religion and following blindly or being overcome by evil?”,”An apple a day?”, “It’s definitely about insecurity.”
No, no… and no. Magritte was very forthcoming about what it was about. He said:
“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”
That’s really the whole point of this. We want to see what’s hidden by what we see. And in this painting, he’s painted himself, which he cannot physically see (without the aid of reflection) and still cannot see within the painting.
As far as Magritte, he was known, but his work wasn’t widely accepted. He dabbled in a lot of varying art mediums, as Fine Artists often do, from videos to sculptures. He died of his Pancreatic Cancer a couple years after he painted The Son of Man, which is now owned by a private party and was last shown publicly in 2011.
So here, I will leave you with a video made by Magritte. It’s short and sweet, just like understanding the Son of Man.
Also, for you qui parlez Francais: Here’s an interview of Magritte done in his later years. It’s in French, évidemment.
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