Bureau of Surrealist Research

René Magritte, Les Amants, Le Perreux-sur-Marne, 1928. In this unsettling image — the first in a series of four variations of Les Amants that Magritte painted in 1928 — the artist invokes the cinematic cliché of a close-up kiss but subverts our voyeuristic pleasure by shrouding the faces in cloth. The device of a draped cloth or veil to conceal a figure’s identity corresponds to a larger Surrealist interest in masks, disguises, and what lies beyond or beneath visible surfaces. The melodramatic scene may also relate to the graphic illustrations that accompanied pulp fiction and thriller stories, which Magritte’s friend Paul Nougé, in a letter from 1927, encouraged the artist to emulate. Image and caption courtesy of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), New York, United States.