The Secret Life, 1928
René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967)

The Secret Life employs the laws of classical perspective in order to subvert the traditional conception of a painting as an imitation or reflection of reality. Magritte typically explored tensions between artifice and nature, between reality and representation. Such images are designed to upset our complacent self-assurance in the logic of a stable, predictable world. A leading member of the Surrealist movement, Magritte used traditional painting techniques to create scenes with "realistic" elements arranged in illogical juxtaposition-comparable in spirit to the celebrated definition of beauty by the French poet Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870): "the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella."