Magritte and the Bowler Hat
Six paintings. One concept
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Magritte distrusted the critics that interpreted the symbology of his work and mocked them: "How lucky you are, you see so many things in it!” Among the few clarifications the artist made about his job, he said that in his paintings “there are no answers, just questions.” And that is how he incites us to see the world in a new way all the time.
But as we are curious by nature, see so many bowler hats in the paintings of Magritte, that we cannot help wondering what they mean. What do they symbolize?
In fact, the bowler hat is not a very enigmatic symbol. It is a resource used masterfully by the artist: putting a bowler hat on any of his characters turns him in any man, even Magritte himself. It becomes a generic, a word, an image that represents a whole group.
You can remember a hat more easily than face features. With the bowler hat, Magritte turns any of his characters into an ordinary man. He does not paint specific persons but “the man.”
And as an anecdote: the artist used that hat and did not like to show himself, he wanted to pass unnoticed, to be an “ordinary man.”
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