What does it mean?

[daddyg]

There's a famous painting which features heavily in the film The Thomas Crown Affair. It has a picture of a suited man with a bowler hat on and an apple over his face. What is it supposed to signify? Thanks.

[andy hughes]

It's a painting by the famous Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte who enjoyed juxtaposing two simple everyday images to make an unusual vision. I don't think it 'means' anything - it just is, but i don;t claim to know anything about art, so I'm happy to be contradicted by any Brian Sewells out there.

[OBonio]

As Andy pointed out, it's not meant to mean anything in general.  Any meaning taken from it is purely an interpretation of the work.  Someone else's idea of what it means.  My take on it is : imagine the apple as the world, and the body of man being encapsulated by.. no.. I'm no good at this.  Back to the computers....

[ludwig]

I think it means Magritte wasn't very good at doing faces. Not many of his paintings have faces in, or if they do, they're covered by something.

[daddyg]

Thankyou all. After andyhughes gave me the artists name I was able to look into it a bit further on the web. Apparently he painted it after a friend asked him for a self portrait. There was also a quote about always wanting to know what was behind things. So that's helped me out. Thanks again.