The Eternally Obvious

René Magritte

1948 · Oil on canvas mounted on board · Modern and Contemporary Art

This work is a variant of a prototype made nearly twenty years earlier, now in the Menil Collection, Houston. Both were created in the same manner: Magritte first painted a nude portrait of his wife, which he then cut into segments, framed, and (in some cases) reassembled onto glass. These works exist between painting and sculpture, and the artist referred to them as both "objets" (objects) and "toiles découpées" (cut-up paintings). By dividing the body into five self-contained sections, Magritte paid tribute to and challenged the traditional female nude. Typically Surrealist, The Eternally Obvious plays with perception, asking the viewer to reconstruct mentally a whole body from discrete parts.

Artist

René Magritte

Date

1948

Medium

Oil on canvas mounted on board

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection, 2002