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In 1922, the aspiring painter Rene Magritte saw a reproduction of a painting by the metaphysical artist, the predecessor of the Surrealists. Giorgio de chirico "Song of Love", and was moved to tears by it. At that moment, the poetic possibilities of painting opened up before the young master, and he decided at all costs to turn each of his paintings into a visual poem. As a result of his acquaintance with de Chirico's painting, Magritte's style began to change, and soon from an adherent of cubo-futurism he turned into a follower of a recently emerging trend - surrealism. At the same time, unlike his colleagues in the workshop, Rene was never imbued with the Freudian psychology of the unconscious, and the main feature of his work was a deliberately academic manner of writing, behind which, however, there was a game with the meanings and logic of the depicted.

Since the time when Rene Magritte joined the surrealists, he began to develop images, which he later used many times in his paintings. One of them was a man in a coat and bowler hat, whose face is often hidden. This character is found in the artist's work more than 50 times, and for the first time he appeared on the canvas "Reflections of a Lonely Passer-by", written in 1926. In the early 20th century, the bowler hat was the most popular headdress of middle-class men. Thus, portraying a man in a hat, Magritte is playing with our perception: we think that we understand who this character is - obviously, the average bourgeois. But the question immediately arises: what do we really know about him? In addition, Rene himself wore the bowler hat, and the hero in such a headdress can be interpreted as a special type of self-portrait.

However, the painting "Reflections of a Lonely Passer-by" is interesting not only because for the first time in the work of Magritte a man in a bowler hat appears on it. In addition to this character, there is a body floating in the air on the canvas, and a gloomy river landscape serves as the entourage of what is happening. There are many interpretations of the image, but they all boil down to psychoanalysis, which Magritte, unlike other surrealists, was never interested in. And yet, according to fans of Freud's theories, the painter was prompted to create this picture by a childhood trauma - the suicide of a mother who drowned in the Sambra River.

Researchers believe that not only the pale figure on the canvas is an echo of this event, but the artist's tendency to hide the faces of the people depicted is associated with the memory of the clothes that wrapped around Regina Magritte's head at the moment when she was fished out of the river. On the other hand, this story is most likely just a legend, and Rene himself stated: “My painting is visible images that hide nothing; they evoke a sense of mystery, and, in fact, when you see one of my paintings, you ask yourself a simple question: "What does this mean?" This does not mean anything, because the secret does not mean anything, it is incomprehensible. "

The process of choosing names for paintings was also interesting - they did not serve to describe or identify works, but, on the contrary, broke the logic of the viewer's perception, creating an additional opposition of meanings. Magritte took the naming process seriously and often invited friends to brainstorm. However, according to Rene's wife, Georgette, in the end the artist, as a rule, settled on his own version.

In the process of searching, the painter did not neglect literary references. Thus, he borrowed the title “Reflections of a Lonely Passer-by” from the last, unfinished book by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which was of an autobiographical nature.

The text was prepared by Elina Bagmet