Collections / Explore the Collection
Today at the Museum

May 24, 2013

A Taste of Asia

1 – 2 p.m.

The Promenades of Euclid

This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.

Title:The Promenades of Euclid
Artist:René Magritte
Date:1955
Creation Place:Europe, Belgium
Credit Line:The William Hood Dunwoody Fund
Image Copyright:©Charly Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Accession Number:68.3
Surrealism was an art of fantasy, dream, and the unconscious, delving into the recesses of the human psyche to discover mysterious, bizarre, and often disturbing images. René Magritte, however, was a Surrealist painter more fascinated by puzzles and paradoxes than by the nature of the unconscious. The Promenades of Euclid presents the age-old problem of illusion versus reality. In this witty picture within a picture, the canvas in front of the window seems to exactly replicate the section of city it blocks from view. But does it? Could the twin forms of tower and street exist only in the artist's imagination? Or do we view the actual city through a transparent canvas?