If the picture above isn’t what comes to mind when you think of the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte, well, that’s sort of the point. It’s the grand lobby of the Hotel Lotto, part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, and it’s the first thing you encounter on your way to the Magritte Museum that shares the building.
The next stunning image you’ll pass is Jan Verha’s Parade of Schools of Brussels, 1881, a painting so detailed that it seems not only photographic but surreal—as if this actual event is an impossible joke.
The building itself has an unusual history: built in the 1700s as a private home, successive owners used it as a hotel, a jewelry store and finally a museum. And despite its full-on classicism, it lines the way to Magritte with worthy surprises, such as Passerelle II, a depiction of a/some footbridges that might bridge Escher and Magritte. It is a 1927 work by Pierre Alechinsky.
And then, just before we enter the neither-really-here-nor-not world of Magritte himself, there is Oscar, a three-dimensional construction by Gavin Turk, done in 1967.
And, since it wouldn’t be fair to talk about Magritte without including him, here’s a 1962 version of The Human Condition.
