The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
René Magritte · Le fils de l’homme · oil on canvas, upright · one figure: a man in a dark overcoat, white collar, red tie and bowler hat, standing frontally before a low wall, the sea and a clouded sky behind him, and a green apple with a few leaves hanging in the air before his face · 1964 · its holder not given · the unit scored is the single canvas of 1964, nothing in it known to be lost, replaced or restored in a way that bears on the image; the related canvases of the same year, the later variants of the motif and the long run of bowler-hatted men are context
Mode
A portrait that withholds its subject; the deadpan illusionism of a framed oil, turned against the one promise of the portrait form
Mythos
The Son of Man, as Christ names himself in the Gospels, over the apple of the Fall: the first man and the second in one bourgeois figure
Phase
Painted in 1964, late in Magritte’s career, in the manner he had settled across three decades; flat daylight on a calm sea, at no hour and in no named place
Presentation
Oil on an upright canvas; five elements, a man, an apple, a wall, the sea and a sky; the figure frontal, in the format of a portrait
Register
Deadpan throughout: flat daylight, a grey sea, a man standing still, and one small, lasting shock where the apple hangs
Scale
One man before one apple, a wall, a sea and a sky; a portrait’s size and a portrait’s format
Governing Proposition
A man in a bowler hat and a dark overcoat stands square to the viewer before a low wall, with a grey-green sea and a clouded sky behind him, and a green apple hangs in the air before his face and hides it. Everything is painted in the same plain daylight, the apple as surely as the coat. The wager of the canvas is that the one thing a portrait exists to give, the face, can be withheld by the most ordinary of objects, and that a title naming the Son of Man over the fruit of the Fall can put the first man and the second into one anonymous figure, whose knowledge-giving apple blocks the face it was meant to open.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
A man in a dark overcoat, white collar, red tie and bowler hat stands square to the viewer before a low wall. Behind the wall a grey-green sea runs to the horizon under a clouded sky. A green apple, a few leaves still on it, hangs in the air before his face and hides it. There is no table, no branch and no hand to hold the apple up; it simply hangs, painted with the same plain daylight as the coat, the wall and the water. The canvas is oil, upright, in the format of a portrait, and it holds five things: a man, an apple, a wall, the sea and a sky.
René Magritte painted it in 1964 and called it Le fils de l’homme, the Son of Man. The work scored here is that single canvas. Nothing in it is known to be lost, replaced or restored in a way that bears on the image, and its holder is not given. It has often been described as a self-portrait, and the man under the hat as the painter; that is reported rather than settled, and the case made here does not lean on it. The canvases Magritte painted around it the same year, among them La grande guerre, where a woman’s face is hidden by flowers, and L’homme au chapeau melon, where a bird crosses before the face, are context; so are the later variants of the apple before the face and the long run of bowler-hatted men in his work.
The subtractive test bites on every element. Without the apple there is a dull portrait of a clerk. Without the sea and the low wall the man stands in no place, and the apple floats in a studio rather than in the world. Without the bowler and the overcoat he is someone in particular rather than anyone. The frontal, upright format is what a portrait would be, and it has to be, since the portrait’s promise is what the apple breaks. What is permitted rather than compelled is the backdrop: wall, sea and sky are the painter’s stock setting, used across many canvases, and they stand here because they are his as much as because this picture requires them.
Movement II
The canvas inherits first from its maker. The bowler-hatted man had been Magritte’s figure since the later 1920s, a clerk’s uniform worn by no one in particular, and the hovering apple belongs to his apple pictures of the 1950s. The deadpan rendering of the impossible, the image that argues with its title, the plain daylight in which a wrong thing is painted as calmly as a right one: all were his long before 1964. Thirty-five years earlier he had painted a pipe and written beneath it that it was not a pipe, and that canvas, The Treachery of Images, stands on this desk at 8.1, half a point above this one.
The turn in 1964 is to stake these devices on a portrait. A face is the thing a portrait is for; here the painter withholds it, in a format that promises it. Against the art of that year, Pop, Minimalism and the late New York School, the canvas swerves by refusing the new, and it refuses at no cost. It is a mature painter consolidating a proven manner, and the wager on that manner had been won three decades before. A wager placed on a proven path is not a swerve, and the axis that scores the turn and its stake together stands among the lowest of the twelve.
Set beside The Treachery of Images, the gap is where it should be. The earlier canvas is the founding turn and this one a late application of a settled manner, and the half point between them is carried mostly by the turn, the pressure on what came after, the disclosure and the necessity of the parts. The two agree on what the painter’s register cannot reach: both stand at 6.8 on The Sublime. And this canvas wins one axis outright, The Archetypal Deep, because its title and its apple build a typology that the pipe has no counterpart for.
Movement III
What the canvas discloses can be stated, and it is a meaning, not a mood. The face, the one thing a portrait exists to give, is withheld by the most ordinary of fruit, and the withholding makes us want it. The visible hides the visible. A portrait, which is made to show a person, can be an act of concealment by the very man who stands for it. That holds, and it is carried by the image alone. Its limit is that it is one meaning, close to a proposition, and it stops near where it starts: the man of the crowd who is everyone and no one is a social condition the picture touches without articulating.
The form is the instrument of that knowledge. Because everything is painted with the same neutral conviction, the apple is not a dream but a fact of the same order as the coat. Put the same arrangement into a collage or a photograph and the apple becomes a trick, a thing pasted on; give it an expressive handling and it becomes a vision, a thing seen by one mind. Only the sober illusionism of a framed oil portrait makes it a plain fact of the world. The format does the rest: an upright canvas with a frontal figure promises a face, and so the concealment is an offence and not a game. The knowledge would survive a change of size, of background or of colour, and the painter carried the motif through variants without losing its sense; that is where the form stops being the only one possible.
One law governs the field. Everything is ordinary and plausible except one interposition, and that interposition obeys the same physics as the rest. The cloud bank at the horizon and the apple at the face, the two elements farthest apart, share one light, one air and one paint. Nothing is handled otherwise, and nothing steps out of the calm. The law holds without a crack across a small world, and it holds without strain partly because the world it governs is small: five elements, one tone, one event.
Movement IV
Here the title does work the picture cannot do without. The Son of Man is the name Christ gives himself in the Gospels. The apple before the face is the fruit of the Fall. Together they put Adam and the Son of Man, the first man and the second, into one bourgeois figure in a bowler hat, and the fruit that gave knowledge stands where it blocks the face it was meant to open. The myth is built into the image rather than alluded to: the apple is the composition’s centre and its archetypal charge at once. What holds the axis short of the bar is the figure, who carries no archetype beyond Everyman in a uniform. The typology rests on one hinge, the title over the apple, and the painted man does not enact it.
Elevation is not sought. The register is deadpan, flat daylight on a grey sea and a man standing still, and what rises comes from the uncanny: the small shock of an apple hanging where a face should be, and the quiet of the sea behind it, a horizon too calm for the event. The shock is real and it lasts, but it is one effect, given at once, and the painting refuses grandeur, terror and beauty on principle. The cloud bank and the water lift it above a diagram; nothing lifts it further.
The making is deliberately anonymous: even modelling, clean edges, a sky and sea in a commercial poster’s calm, a coat painted as a dark mass with a few folds. It is the right command for the work, since a visible hand would undo the apple’s fact. Read to the same anchors as every medium, it is competent rather than masterful. The flesh of the hand and the drapery are summary, the sea is a formula, and the apple, the most worked passage, is a fine piece of still life and no more. The picture holds the person, the social type, the natural order and the sacred in one structure, the apple carrying the sacred and the natural at once. Family, labour, the state, history and any second person are absent. It is a small form, and the figure on The Encompassed describes it.
Movement V
The reach of the image is very wide and of one kind. It entered advertising, film, television and graphic design, and it is among the most quoted paintings of its century in popular culture. As redirected practice among painters its reach is small. What later art took from Magritte, the impossible painted as plainly as the possible and the image that argues with its title, it took from the body of the work and from earlier canvases, not from this one. The intrinsic force is modest: the canvas applies a late, settled method and does not reorganise what painting can do.
Return yields something, but less than its fame suggests. The leaves keep the apple a picked fruit, taken from a tree; the title reopens with each look, and the man becomes now Adam, now the Son of Man, now no one; the calm sea reads differently once the shock has passed. Much of the attention of six decades has been reproduction, quotation and parody rather than re-examination, and the picture is quickly consumed. Among its neighbours on the desk it sits where its profile puts it: a tenth below Jasper Johns’s According to What, painted the same year and standing at 7.7, which wins more axes than it loses against it, and a tenth above Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God at 7.5.
After sixty-two years the canvas is whole, nothing known to be lost or replaced, an oil in a stable manner. The image is everywhere and passes whole into its copies; the object is not argued as one on continuous public view, and its holder and condition are not given, so presence is charged lightly. What holds the work in the band of Tier III and not above it is plain: a swerve made decades earlier and here consolidated, a pressure on tradition wide in culture and small in practice, a single uncanny effect, and a small world. What stands is the apple: a man before the sea, square to us, and in front of his face the most ordinary fruit, painted as calmly as his coat, keeping him from us.
Act III · The Twelve
Five things: a man, an apple, a wall, the sea, a sky. Take any away and the picture changes what it says. Without the apple there is a dull portrait of a clerk; without the sea and the low wall the man stands in no place, and the apple floats in a studio rather than in the world; without the bowler and the overcoat he is someone in particular rather than anyone. The parts are required, and the frontal, upright format is what a portrait would be. What holds the axis below the high eights is the backdrop: wall, sea and sky are the painter’s stock setting, used across many canvases, present because they are his rather than because this picture alone compels them.
Score: 8.2 / 10
What the canvas brings into the open can be stated, and it is a meaning, not a mood. The face, the one thing a portrait exists to give, is withheld by an ordinary object, and the withholding makes us want it: the visible hides the visible, and a portrait can be an act of concealment by the man who stands for it. That holds and is credited fully as disclosure through image. What holds the axis well below the bar is that it is one meaning, close to a proposition, and stops near where it starts. The anonymous bourgeois, the man of the crowd who is everyone and no one, is a social condition the picture touches without articulating.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The register is deadpan: flat daylight, a grey sea, a man standing still. What elevation there is comes from the uncanny, the small shock of an apple hanging where a face should be, and from the quiet of the sea behind it, a horizon too calm for the event. The shock is real and lasts. But it is one effect, seen at once, and the painting refuses grandeur, terror and beauty as matters of principle. It is not a flat work: the cloud bank and the sea give an air of weather and distance that lifts it above a diagram. One summit moment, held and not repeated, holds the axis among the lowest of the twelve.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Here the title does real work. The Son of Man is the name Christ gives himself in the Gospels, and the apple before the face is the fruit of the Fall. Together they put Adam and the Son of Man, the first man and the second, into one bourgeois figure, and the fruit that gave knowledge blocks the face it was meant to open. That is myth built into the image, not only alluded to: the apple is the composition’s centre and its archetypal charge at once. What holds it well short of the bar is the man himself, who carries no archetype beyond Everyman in a uniform. The typology is supplied by the title rather than enacted by the figure, and the sea and wall add no mythic order.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The tradition this canvas inherits is first Magritte’s own. The bowler-hatted man had been his figure since the later 1920s, and the hovering apple belongs to his apple pictures of the 1950s. In 1964 the turn is to stake these devices on a portrait and its withheld face. Against the art of its year, Pop, Minimalism and the late New York School, the canvas swerves by refusing the new, but at no cost. It is a mature painter consolidating a proven manner, and that wager had been won some thirty years before. A wager placed on a proven path is not a swerve, and that holds the axis among the lowest of the twelve.
Score: 6.8 / 10
The form is the sober illusionism of a framed oil portrait, frontal, full of plausible daylight, and that form is the instrument. Because everything is painted with the same neutral conviction, the floating apple is not a dream but a fact of the same order as the coat. Put it in a collage or a photograph and the apple becomes a trick; give it an expressive handling and it becomes a vision. The upright portrait format is also what makes the concealment an offence, since the format promises a face. What holds the axis below the top: the knowledge would survive a change of size, of background or of colour, and the painter carried the motif through variants without losing its sense.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Return yields something. The leaves keep the apple a picked fruit rather than a sphere, a thing taken from a tree. The title reopens with each look at the apple, and the man of the crowd becomes, on each return, now Adam, now the Son of Man, now no one. The calm of the sea behind him reads differently once the shock has passed. Six decades of attention have not exhausted it. What holds the axis is the kind of attention: much of it has been reproduction, quotation and parody rather than re-examination, the picture is consumed quickly, and the deeper well of the painter’s questions lies across the whole of his work more than in this canvas.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Published, so force and reach are scored together, in the field of European painting of the 1960s. The intrinsic force is modest. The canvas does not reorganise what painting can do; it applies a late, settled method to the portrait, and its devices were the painter’s own long before. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: very wide, but of a particular kind. The image entered advertising, film, television and graphic design, and is among the most quoted paintings of its century in popular culture. As redirected practice among painters its reach is small; what later art took from Magritte, the deadpan rendering of the impossible and the image that argues with its title, it took from the body of work and from earlier canvases.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Survival over sixty-two years, weighed on form, presence and fabric. Form: whole, nothing known to be lost, replaced or restored in a way that bears on the image, an oil in a stable manner. Presence: the image has the widest presence a painting of its decade can have, quoted and reproduced everywhere, and it is the image that the desk weighs for a painting. But wide presence earns little, and fame is not proof. The object itself is not argued as one on continuous public view, and its holder and condition are not given here. That is charged lightly on presence, less than for a work wholly unseen, and the figure sits a tenth under what this span usually allows.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Judged as command of oil on canvas, to the same anchors as every medium. The handling is deliberately anonymous: even modelling, clean edges, a sky and sea in a commercial poster’s calm, a coat painted as a dark mass with a few folds. It is the right command for the work, and it is load-bearing, since a visible hand would undo the apple’s fact. But it is competent rather than masterful. The flesh of the hand and the drapery are summary, the sea is a formula, and the apple, the most worked passage, is a fine piece of still life and no more. The plainness is exact, which holds the axis clear of its floor; it is still plain.
Score: 7.6 / 10
One law governs: everything is ordinary and plausible except one interposition, and that interposition is painted in exactly the same physics as everything else. Take the two most distant elements, the cloud bank at the horizon and the apple at the face. They obey the same light, the same air and the same paint, and nothing in the field is handled otherwise. The law is held without a crack. What holds the axis below the top is the range it governs: a small world of five elements, one tone and one event. Narrowness is not coherence, and the law holds without strain partly because it is asked to govern little.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Held in one structure: the person, a portrait and its face; the social type, the bourgeois uniform of hat and coat; the natural order, sea and sky; and the sacred, the Fall and the Son of Man through apple and title. These are integrated rather than listed, since the apple carries the sacred and the natural at once, and it is the fruit before the face that joins the person to both. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: family, labour, the state, history, any second person. It is a small form, a single figure before a single view, and the figure describes the form. It clears its own floor.
Score: 6.4 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.7, then The Inevitable and The Inner Law at 8.2, with The Unconcealment and The Living Form at 7.8. An image whole after sixty-two years and present everywhere, charged lightly because the object is not on continuous view; five elements of which none can go without changing what the picture says; one law, an ordinary world with one interposition painted in the same physics, held without a crack; a face withheld by an apple, which makes the portrait an act of concealment; and a sober portrait form that turns the floating apple into a fact.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.4: the person, the social type, the natural order and the sacred held in one figure, and no family, labour, state, history or second person. Next above it, The Sublime and The Swerve at 6.8: one uncanny effect given at once in a register that refuses elevation, and a late consolidation of devices whose wager had been won thirty years before. Then Pressure on Tradition at 7.3 and The Bottomless Well at 7.4: a reach very wide in culture and small in practice, and a picture quickly consumed. They are one fact: a late, exact application of a settled manner to a single figure.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.2 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 7.6, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 7.8, The Archetypal Deep at 7.6, Pressure on Tradition at 7.3 and The Swerve at 6.8 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Sublime, 6.8, The Swerve, 6.8, Pressure on Tradition, 7.3, and The Bottomless Well, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.4. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: the twelve sum to 90.6, an average of 7.55 that displays 7.6, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Le fils de l’homme, painted by René Magritte in 1964 in oil on canvas, and of its place in his work and in the culture since; not from standing before it, and no image or written source was consulted. The image is known well and the object thinly, since its surface, condition and exhibition record are not given. The work scored is the single canvas of 1964: the man in overcoat, collar, tie and bowler hat, the apple with its leaves, the wall, the sea and the sky. Nothing in it is known to be lost, replaced or restored in a way that bears on the image, and nothing stands in place of an original part. The canvases of the same year with faces hidden, La grande guerre and L’homme au chapeau melon, the gouaches and later variants of the apple before the face, the apple pictures of the 1950s and the bowler-hatted men from the later 1920s on are context, and are not scored. No words are quoted but the title. The description of the picture as a self-portrait is given as reported, not settled, and no axis leans on it; a statement often attributed to the painter about this picture is not quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the dimensions, the holder and the history of ownership, the circumstances of the commission, the exhibition record, the condition, details of the figure’s eye and arm sometimes remarked on, the dates of earlier pictures with hidden faces, and particular uses of the image in film.