the above in order of appearance: The Great War on Facades (1964), Man in the Bowler Hat (1964), The Son of Man (1964) From all i've read about Rene Magritte i've gathered that when looking at his paintings there are no concrete answers about their meaning. The mystery and the pleasure derived from sorting out that mystery is a key element of any of his works. He changes out objects, and creates pairings that are not easily interpretable. Sometimes he uses very basic pairings as in "the son of man" pictured above. A human figure, an apple, the title itself; delving into religion and religious imagery without really wanting to talk about it. It acts as the initial grab at the audience, the first clues that when immediately applied, make sense then begin to fall apart as you begin a process of deciphering the contents of the image. What he wants is for the viewer to experience that process, and while I am choosing specific characters and archetypes and they are being chosen for some basic relationships, I wish to consider possible connections but not work to make them any more obvious.
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