Retuning to Reproduction Forbidden

There are two heads looking at something in the distance. But it's a reflection. Where is the face? I suppose one interpretation is that we never can truly see. But if we look at this with the intention of discovering what it means, then we don't see the painting itself, but instead think of the question that has been raised.

According to Margritte: The mind sees two different senses. It sees, as with the eyes, and it sees a question (with no eyes). But the eye itself sees in the way that the hand grasps -- passing over many things which, through a lack of interest, nothing induces it to seize.

Seeing is an act, according to Magritte, in the course of which it can happen that a subject escapes our attention.

Magritte the Man; chronicler of ennui

When it came to painting, Magritte manifested an almost constitutional dislike, feigning something between boredom, fatigue and disgust -- the "savored infirmities of a retired acrobat." He particularly liked to refuse the name of artist, saying that he was a man who thought, and who communicated his thought by means of painting, as others communicated it by writing music or words. Painting represented for him a valid means of expressing, in a constantly changing light, the two or three fundamental problems with which our mind is always struggling. More particularly, it represented a permanent revolt against the commonplaces of existence.

Man Reading a Newspaper 1927-28
L'Homme au journal
Oil on canvas 46 x 31 1/2 (54.5 x 73)
Tate Gallery, London

Reproduction Forbidden

To those who tried to interpret his pictures, Magritte liked to answer "You are more fortunate than I am." Magritte's paintings are intended as an attack upon society's preconceived ideas and predetermined good sense. He considered his work successful when no explanation of causality of meaning can satisfy our curiosity.

The fear of being mystified, says Magritte, applies equally to painted images which have the power to provoke such fear. Sometimes an image can place its spectator under serious accusation.

A person who only looks for what he wants in painting will never find that which transcends his preferences. But, if one has been trapped by the mystery of an image which refuses all explanation, a moment of panic will sometimes occur. These moments of panic are what count for Magritte.

Magritte used painting for this purpose alone: "I think as though no one had ever thought before me."

La Reproduction interdite
1937
Oil on Canvas
81.5 x 65 cm [32 x 25.5 in]
Collection, Museum Boijmans Van Beunigen, Rotterdam