I really dig this High Society surrealist painting by Rene Magritte. I had never seen this one before. Granted, I certainly was no expert on Magritte before, but I had seen his famous ones: Son of Man, ceci n’est pas un pipe, [which is also called The Treachery of Images] and a few others.

I find the majority of Surrealism to be weird. Interesting, for sure, but you know, just weird. I feel like this is more of an aesthetically pleasing Surrealism. I could hang one of these in my house, if I had the means. Whereas, I would never hang a Dali painting. [Those clocks just scare me]. Though he did say that he wanted to “make the most everyday objects shriek aloud.”

Rene spent some time as a graphic designer, which may account for his clean, visually appealing compositions. He transformed familiar, commonplace objects into unfamiliar and ambiguous scenes through surprising juxtapositions, scale shifts, and word play.

This was created in 1962. It is oil on canvas, but they remind me of paper dolls. They are wearing the trademark bowlers hat that appears in all of his paintings. “The bowler…poses no surprise,” Magritte said in 1966. “It is a headdress that is not original. The man with the bowler is just middle-class man in his anonymity. And I wear it. I am not eager to singularize myself.”