Author Archives: j.wang

The Menanced Assassin (1927) by Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte was born in Belgium in 1898. Magritte is known as a famous Surrealist artist. He originally worked as a graphic artist, but in 1926 he changed his work to become a figurative artist. His work is famous for being very strange, making common things unfamiliar or uncanny. In his art, every day objects become strange displays.

I came across this work while at the Museum of Modern Art. It is called The Menanced Assassin, painted in 1927. It is an oil on canvas painting, and considered Magritte’s largest and most theatric paintings. The work displays a bloodied, nude women (who as the title of the work suggests has probably been murdered) laying on a bed. In the background are three men looking at the scene, while in the foreground a man is calmly looking at a gramophone. In front of him are two men, one wielding a club and the other, a net. Both them appear to be hiding. There is so much going on in the painting, but the specifics of what has actually happened seems to be for the audience to interpret.

The Menanced Assassin reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with modernism as it is part of the surrealist movement, which is part of modernism. Surrealism aims to depict unnerving, illogical scenes. Surrealism aims to express our unconsciouness. It guides us to create our own stories and interpretations. As shown in the painting, the three men in the background are clearly visible to the man by the gramophone and who I assume has murdered the woman. However, he seems to not care or worried by the three men who have witnessed the crime in the scene. That is what I perceive is what is happening in the scene. Others might view the scene differently because of the three men in the background.

What drew me to this work was because of how chaotic and messy the painting was. I noticed the dead body in the scene.  There were so many subjects in the painting, and it was so different from the other works around it. That easily caught my attention right away. As I started to analyze the painting more, I noticed the three men in the background as well as the actions of the two men wielding a club and net. This made the painting so much more eerie, and gave me goosebumps at the unusualness of it.

My question for Magritte would be why the figures in the painting have such blank, dull expressions on their faces, even though so much chaos is happening in the scene.