Magritte, Rene_Prohibited to depict

René Magritte, 1907-1984
La réproduction interdite, Boijmans van Beuningen.

When Magritte was thirteen years old in 1912, his mother was found dead in the Sambre River. She had thrown herself into the water with a cloth covering her forehead. In his work, he refers to this tragedy several times with illustrations of a veiled woman whose face is covered.
Magritte had two brothers: Raymond and Paul.

Edward James was a wealthy English aristocrat and surrealist poet. In the 1930s, he supported Magritte and Dalí by purchasing their work. Magritte created this enigmatic portrait of him. We see Edward James from behind, standing in front of a mirror. In it, he sees the same thing we see, namely his backside. Of course, that is impossible.
To add to the confusion, Magritte painted the book by Alan Poe, his favorite author, in mirror image.
It is the French edition of ‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’, Poe's only novel.
Poe's descriptions of the macabre and mysterious were greatly appreciated by Magritte and other surrealists. Such an atmosphere also dominates this enigmatic portrait.

Magritte believed that people “always want to see what is hidden behind what we see.” This painting is an interpretation of that idea. What is impossible in reality—looking in a mirror and seeing the back of your own head—is possible in a painting. These kinds of incongruous images are characteristic of surrealism.

Magritte
What interested the Belgian artist was the mystery that lies in visible everyday reality. It was not so much the invisible, the subconscious, and dream images that inspired him, but rather ordinary subjects to which he gave a twist.

Erik Beenker / Boijmans van Beuningen
De Collectie

Erik Beenker / Boijmans van Beuningen
De Collectie

Photos
wikipedia