"Sur la Visage, XI" by Rene Magritte, one of his last colour lithograph series, printed shortly after his death in 1967, presents a mysterious arrangement of images pulled from Magritte’s visual vocabulary.
A bifurcated backdrop, indicating a desert but also a forest, confuses our sense of place. A pair of classic Magritte apples, given masks, are suggestive of two subjects and a tree, exposing its contents, recalls a cabinet of curiosities. The incongruous messages delivered in this work are testaments to Magritte’s larger investment in exploring the relationship between signified and signifier, message and code.
