The Most Parodied Painting in the World I Magritte
- 8 mai
- 1 min de lecture
In 1964, Harry Torczyner, a New York lawyer and close friend of René Magritte, commissioned a self-portrait. Magritte, who described the process as a 'problem of conscience', duly painted his own likeness: a man in a dark overcoat and bowler hat, standing before a low stone wall with the grey-green Atlantic behind him. Then he covered his own face entirely with a hovering green apple.
Torczyner had asked for a portrait. He received something considerably stranger, and
considerably more powerful. The Son of Man has since become one of the most reproduced images in the history of Western art. It appears in The Thomas Crown Affair, on Halloween costumes, advertising campaigns, album covers, and in countless parodies from The Simpsons to Norman Rockwell. Paul McCartney was so taken with Magritte's apple motif that he named his label Apple Records, which in turn inspired Steve Jobs to name his company Apple.
Magritte sold the painting to Torczyner in August 1964 for a modest sum. In 1998, Christie's auctioned it for $5.4 million. Today it belongs to a private collector who occasionally lends it to museums.
Magritte explained his intentions simply: 'Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.'
A commissioned self-portrait that erased the self entirely. A painting about concealment that became the most recognised face in Surrealism.
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