Magritte, Rene_Reproduction prohibited

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

In 1912, when Magritte was thirteen years old, his mother’s body was recovered from the Sambre River. She had thrown herself into the water with a cloth tied around her forehead. In his work, he refers to this tragedy on several occasions 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 a surrealist poet. In the 1930s, he supported Magritte and Dalí by purchasing their work. Magritte painted this enigmatic portrait of him. We see Edward James from behind, standing in front of a mirror. In the mirror, he sees the same thing we see: his back. Of course, that’s impossible.
To add to the confusion, Magritte did, in fact, paint the book by Edgar Allan 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 the mysterious were highly appreciated by Magritte and other Surrealists. A similar atmosphere pervades this enigmatic portrait as well.

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 inherent 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 unique twist.

Erik Beenker / Boijmans van Beuningen
De Collection

Magritte, Rene_Reproduction prohibited

References