René Magritte: Man of Many Hats

Envision a world where apples defy gravity, a human eye is a window to the sky, and trains travel through time. Impossible as these scenes are in the real world, René Magritte (reh-NAY ma-GREET), brought them to life on canvas.

Magritte, shown above next to one of his paintings, was born in Belgium in 1898. René took his first art lesson at age 12. He painted so well that his family believed he was a prodigy. When René was just 13, his father even entered one of the boy’s paintings in an international art show.

In 1916, Magritte enrolled at an advanced art school, where he learned to paint in many different styles. The young artist found his passion in the oddity of Surrealism. Surrealists developed their ideas from the strange things that happen in dreams. They juxtapose unrelated objects, placing them side by side. These images seem both real and unreal—sur-real.    

Magritte couldn’t support himself and his wife just by painting, so he also worked as a graphic designer. Like other businessmen of the time, he dressed in a suit and hat, called a bowler hat. Seeing so many other men dressed like him on the street inspired Magritte. The man wearing a bowler hat became a motif, or subject, that appears often in the artist’s work. In fact, Magritte created at least 21 different paintings featuring the businessman!

Magritte’s first painting of the man in the bowler hat was a self-portrait. Many historians believe that the artist referred to himself whenever he used this motif, but Magritte often left this unclear. In the 1964 work The Son of Man, above, a bright green apple hovers unnaturally just in front of the figure’s face. It hides the man’s facial features. The figure could be anyone, including the artist himself. In this surreal composition, Magritte invites viewers to wonder what the apple is hiding and why.

In his 1953 work Golconda (gol-KON-duh), above, Magritte uses repetition, painting the man in the bowler hat dozens of times. Arranged in layers of varied scale, the smaller men are in the background and the larger men are in the foreground, which makes them seem closer to the viewer.

Magritte painted in a realistic style, including many specific details like the architecture of the building, the shadows on the wall, even the buttons on the men’s coats. The men seem identical, but closer inspection reveals variation among them. Some have their hands in their pockets. Others carry briefcases. Without variation, the repeated figure might make the painting boring. But subtle differences encourage viewers to look more closely.

The bowler hat motif appears again in Magritte’s 1966 work Decalcomania (DEE-CAL-co-man-ia), below. The image is bisected, with the man on the left and a curtain on the right. By shaping the negative space like a figure, Magritte adds a veil of mystery to a simple painting.