The Mona Lisa is. Girl with a Pearl Earring is. Starry Night.
You won't travel far down the list of art’s most recognizable images, however, before landing on Rene Magritte’s The Son of Man, on display now through October 28 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, a highlight of its exhibition devoted to the artist.
One huge distinction separates The Son of Man from the other works mentioned and 99% of those which are instantly recognizable. The other pictures can be found in museums, on display daily for all of us to enjoy at our convenience. The Son of Man remains privately owned, rarely appearing for public observation.
Take advantage of this opportunity.
“At SFMOMA, we've been fortunate to be able to borrow it twice in the past 20 years -- for our current presentation, Rene Magritte: The Fifth Season, and once in 2000,” Lily Pearsall, Curatorial Project Manager at SFMOMA said. “It’s one of the most iconic paintings of the 20th century.”
Type “Son of Man painting” into Google and 150,000,000 results return. Click on the “shopping” tab and you can find the image reproduced on posters of every size, T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, clocks and cellphone cases. Keep looking and you’ll see pictures of Darth Vader replacing the man in the bowler hat with the green apple in front of his face. Donald Trump in the background, a Twitter bird logo in front of his face mimicking the composition.
A person needn’t know a thing about art to be familiar with the masterpiece. Which begs a question about such a seemingly odd painting: what’s the attraction?
“Magritte is interested in exploring our desire to see what is hidden,” Pearsall said. “Like many of his images, The Son of Man alerts viewers to that desire and to how our perceptions shape our understandings and experience of the world. It is an endlessly compelling image because it shifts the act of meaning-making back onto the viewer, leaving us to consider whether what we see is concealing something else.
"The Son of Man is one of just four oil paintings René Magritte identified as self-portraits, but by hiding his face behind a floating apple the artist defies our expectations of what a portrait, or self-portrait, should be.”
Magritte, of course, deserves attention for more than The Son of Man and that may be The Son of Man’s greatest achievement in his exhibit. The instantly recognizable image serves as an entry point for casual observers to become exposed to more of Magritte’s body of work.
“My hope is that those who don’t yet know Magritte will visit and encounter a painter who inspires them to question their surroundings; while those who are familiar with his work will be able to discover new sides of a supremely fascinating artist,” Caitlin Haskell, curator of the exhibit, said upon its launch.
For instance, did you know Magritte went through a phase where his work was heavily influenced by Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir? You will after visiting the exhibit.
Magritte may be best known and most closely associated with Surrealism, but the breadth of his work on view in the exhibit – including more than 20 pieces never before seen in U.S. museums – reinforces the degree to which his art defied easy categorization.
These images, while much less familiar than The Son of Man, are no less interesting. All can be seen, along with dozens more sure to puzzle, inspire and provoke, in the exhibit.
