What Do René Magritte’s Dreamlike Paintings Mean? Five Curators Offer Their Analyses

The otherworldly, madcap scenes that the Belgian surrealist René Magritte painted have baffled and amazed art historians for nearly a century. Magritte’s works often strike an uncanny balance of eeriness and tranquility, horror and whimsy, with apples, bowler hats, obscured or disjointed faces, and tufty clouds among his most frequent subjects. To shed light on the many mysteries of the artist’s work, ARTnews asked five curators to explicate a work by Magritte. Their responses