History Creator / ReneMagritte

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was Belgium's most famous 20th century painter. One of the icons of the surrealistic movement, he painted countless paintings with absurd images, many which have become famous, such as "TheTreacheryOfImages" ("This is not a pipe") and "The Son of Man" (the man in a bowler hat who has a floating apple in front of his face).

* AlienGeometries: Magritte's paintings have no sense of normal physics. Light and darkness can happen in the same frame, people and things can float in the air, windows open to black backgrounds,...

* TheParody: He made a parody of Creator/JacquesLouisDavid's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. The same idea is executed with multiple figures in his parody of Edouard Manet's ''Le Balcon''. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Creator/SandroBotticelli's ''La Art/{{Primavera}}'' on ''Art/LeBouquetToutFait'' (''Ready-made bouquet'') where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

* TheParody: He made a parody of Creator/JacquesLouisDavid's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. The same idea is executed with multiple figures in his parody of Edouard Manet's ''Le Balcon''. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Sandro Botticelli's ''La Art/{{Primavera}}'' on ''Le Bouquet Tout Fait'' (''Ready-made bouquet'') where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was Belgium's most famous 20th century painter. One of the icons of the surrealistic movement, he painted countless paintings with absurd images, many which have become famous, such as "The Treachery of Images" ("This is not a pipe") and "The Son of Man" (the man in a bowler hat who has a floating apple in front of his face).

* NiceHat: The men in his work often wear bowler hats.

* MagicMirror: A 1937 painting shows a mirror with an illogical reflection. It simply shows a man's back again instead of showing his face. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_be_Reproduced]]

* MermaidProblem: Magritte once solved this by painting a reverse mermaid, which was human female from the navel down, and a fish from the navel up.

* TheParody: He made a parody of Creator/JacquesLouisDavid's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. The same idea is executed with multiple figures in his parody of Edouard Manet's ''Le Balcon''. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Sandro Botticelli's ''La Primavera'' on ''Le Bouquet Tout Fait'' (''Ready-made bouquet'') where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

* TheParody: He made a parody of Jacques-Louis David's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. The same idea is executed with multiple figures in his parody of Edouard Manet's ''Le Balcon''. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Sandro Botticelli's ''La Primavera'' on ''Le Bouquet Tout Fait'' (''Ready-made bouquet'') where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

* TheParody: He made a parody of Jacques-Louis David's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Sandro Botticelli's ''La Primavera'' on ''Le Bouquet Tout Fait'' (''Ready-made bouquet'') where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

* ImpliedDeathThreat: ''L'Assassin Menacé'' shows a murderer surrounded by five men, bound to grab him.
* ItsRainingMen: Taken quite literally with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golconda_(painting) Golconda]] and the picture above. Although, Magritte being Magritte, they might just as easily be raining ''up''.

* WorldOfSymbolism: Though some of Magritte's paintings were surreal for the sake of being surreal some of them do have a deeper meaning. The image of a woman with a cloak around her head in many of his paintings refers to his mother, who committed suicide by drowning herself in a river. Supposedly her dress was covering her face, when they retrieved her from the water. Recent research has cast doubt over the story of her covered face, but it's still a fact that the image appears a lot in his paintings.

* RapeAsDrama: Invoked in the painting ''The Rape'', which shows a woman's face with a naked female torso in place of the face, so the eyes are breasts, the nose is a navel and the mouth is the pubic area. Depicted, kind of, in the painting ''Titanic Days'', which puts a naked women and a clothed man into the same body.

* ImpliedDeathThreat: ''L' Assassin Menacé'' shows a murderer surrounded by five men, bound to grab him.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The painting ''The Treachery of Images'' depicts a pipe with the caption "Ceci n' est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). For those of you who find this strange: indeed it is not a pipe, but a PAINTING of a pipe.

* TheEveryMan: Ordinary men in bowler hats and black costumes are often depicted in his work, usually unfazed by all the surrounding madness around them. Magritte himself often dressed the same way, claiming that he had no desire to stand out from the crowd.

* MindScrew: By combining ordinary everyday life images and putting them in absurd situations, or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Condition_(painting) making images dissolve into their environment]], or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_be_Reproduced images that simply don't make sense]].

* MindScrew: By combining ordinary every day life images and putting them in absurd situations, or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Condition_(painting) making images dissolve into their environment]], or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_be_Reproduced images that simply don't make sense]].

* TreacheryOfImages: TropeMaker.

René Magritte (1898–1967) was Belgium's most famous 20th century painter. One of the icons of the surrealistic movement, he painted countless paintings with absurd images, many which have become famous, such as "The Treachery of Images" ("This is not a pipe") and "The Son of Man" (the man in a bowler hat who has a floating apple in front of his face).

* ChildrenAreInnocent: Subverted with ''Young Girl Eating A Bird (The Pleasure)'', which is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.

* NonIndicativeName: The titles of his paintings usually have nothing to do with the actual content. Subverted with the pipe painting, which is called "The Treachery of Images". See under WordSaladTitle below.

* ShoutOut:
** The painting ''L' Empire des Lumières'' (''The Empire Of Lights'') inspired the poster of ''Film/TheExorcist'' where Father merrin is standing in front of the MacNeil family's house at night.
** ''The Son Of Man'' is a stolen painting seen in ''Film/TheThomasCrownAffair''. The protagonist of the film uses numerous accomplices, all dressed like the subject of the painting, to confuse the police while he enters the museum to apparently return the painting he stole earlier in the film. The bowler-hatted men all carry identical briefcases full of copies of The Son of Man.
** Music/{{Yes}}' music video to ''Astral Traveller'' also features a man who walks away from the camera and is revealed to have a large picture of an apple floating in front of his face.
** Roger Daltrey's album cover for ''One Of The Boys'' was inspired by Magritte's ''La Reproduction Interdite''.
** Music/TheBeatles' company ''Apple'' was also inspired by Magritte's work.
** The image of ''Son Of Man'' appears in Music/MichaelJackson's music video for ''Scream''.
** ''La Chambre d' 'Écoute'' was used as the album cover of ''Beck-Ola'' by Jeff Beck.
** Homer is depicted as the ''Son Of Man'' painting in WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons episode ''Treehouse Of Horror IV''.
** The ''WesternAnimation/MuppetBabies'' episode "The Weirdo Zone" has Gonzo appearing in various parodies of Magritte paintings.
** Many of Creator/{{Hipgnosis}}' album covers were influenced by Magritte, most notably the faceless man on the back cover of the Music/PinkFloyd album ''Music/WishYouWereHere''.
** The animated short film ''WesternAnimation/MonaLisaDescendingAStaircase'' is basically a collage of many paintings, one of which is Magritte's reverse mermaid, ''Collective Invention''.

* TheParody: He made a parody of Jacques-Louis David's ''Portrait de Madame Récamier'' by reproducing the painting, only with the woman inside a coffin. Magritte also used a flower-crowned female figure, Flora, standing in a floral-patterned dress scattering flowers from Sandro Botticelli's ''La Primavera'' on ''La Bouquet Tout Fair'' where she is walking past the back of one of Magritte's typical everyday men in bowler hat.

* NonIndicativeName: The titles of his paintings usually have nothing to do with the actual content. Subverted with the pipe painting, which is called "The Treachery of Images".

* WordSaladTitle: Quite a few of his painting's title have no connection to the painting at all. Examples include [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difficult_Crossing The Difficult Crossing/The Birth of the Idol]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empty_Mask The Empty Mask]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Telescope_(Magritte) The Telescope]].

* WorldSaladTitle: Quite a few of his painting's title have no connection to the painting at all. Examples include [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Difficult_Crossing The Difficult Crossing/The Birth of the Idol]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empty_Mask The Empty Mask]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Telescope_(Magritte) The Telescope]].