This painting is named “The Son of Man”, and is a self portrait by the Belgian artist René Magritte, created in 1964. The artist’s face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple but his eyes can be seen peeking over the edge of the apple.
The interesting things about it, is everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.
Another interesting fact is that the artist used the green apple as an ongoing motif in his work, in particular his use of it in the 1966 painting “Le Jeu De Morre”, owned by Paul McCartney, which inspired the Beatles to name their record company Apple Corps.
A.G. Munson
