The Son of Man (4/9)

This piece, a likeness of which is presented here, was painted by Belgian artist René Magritte in 1964. Although the man appears to be facing forward, his left elbow juts out the wrong way and suggests the opposite. Many agree that the man in the painting is meant to be Magritte himself. Like many of Magritte’s pieces, the viewer is not granted a depiction of the entire scene. We are left with questions about what the visual actually entails. (Cue the popular The Treachery of Images. This work shows a pipe on a plain background, yet written underneath the pipe is the tagline “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” or “This is not a pipe.”) (Image courtesy of Nathan Hughes Hamilton via Flickr)