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Details / Information for The Secret Life

The Secret Life

1928
(Belgian, 1898–1967)
Belgium, 20th century
oil on canvas
Unframed: 57.2 x 75.9 x 2.9 cm (22 1/2 x 29 7/8 x 1 1/8 in.)
Bequest of Lockwood Thompson 1992.298
© C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Location: 225 German Expressionism & Surrealism
Copyright
This artwork is known to be under copyright.

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Did You Know?

This is the first of many paintings Magritte made with the title The Secret Life.

Description

A preeminent Surrealist active in Brussels and Paris, Magritte used traditional painting techniques to create images of realistically rendered objects juxtaposed illogically - comparable in spirit to poet Isidore Ducasse's definition of beauty as"the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." Magritte's visual paradoxes are designed to undermine our complacent belief in a stable, predictable, rational world.
Oil painting depicting a room with wood floors, red walls, and crown molding looking towards a back wall replaced with white clouds floating in rows across a blue sky. The clouds, fluffiest near the top, become longer, thinner strips towards the bottom. On the floor in the lower right corner, a rectangular block created in shades of grey has wavy surface like a tree stump facing us, while the visible top and side appear smooth.

The Secret Life

1928

René Magritte

(Belgian, 1898–1967)
Belgium, 20th century

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