The Menaced Assassin

Magritte, René

dc.coverage.temporal	creation date: 1927	en_US
dc.creator	Magritte, René	en_US
dc.date	1927	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2007-11-02T18:24:30Z
dc.date.available	2007-11-02T18:24:30Z
dc.date.issued	1927	en_US
dc.identifier	104885	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1721.3/22456	en_US
dc.description	A woman's naked body, blood trickling from her mouth, lies on a couch. The well–dressed man who is presumably her killer—the assassin of the painting's title—stands ready to leave, his coat and hat on a chair and his bag adjoining, but he is delayed by the sound of music: languidly relaxed, he listens to a gramophone. Meanwhile two men (agents of the law?), oddly alike, wait in the foyer to ambush him, armed with club and net. And behind him three more men, triplets to the others' twins, watch from over the balcony, witnesses outside the action's frame—like reflections of the painting's viewers, peering in from the other direction. Magritte's Belgian brand of Surrealism deals in clear visions with unclear meanings. Unlike the fantastic dreamscapes of Paris Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí, his settings are strangely normal, and his protagonists are bourgeois gentlemen in ties and bowler hats. Yet he specialized in permanent irresolution, in mysteries without a key. The Menaced Assassin must be rooted in detective novels and movies, which fascinated Magritte, but its studied frozen quality, the impassivity of its actors, puts it in another dimension from the dime thriller. Disturbingly, the gaze of the three men at the back meets the viewers' own. The murderer himself is menaced; the viewers themselves are viewed.	en_US
dc.description	full view	en_US
dc.format.extent	150.4 x 195.2 cm (59.21 x 76.85 inches)	en_US
dc.format.medium	oil paint	en_US
dc.format.medium	canvas	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	130972	en_US
dc.rights	(c)Davis Art Images	en_US
dc.subject	Police	en_US
dc.subject	Dead	en_US
dc.subject	Murderers	en_US
dc.subject	Phonographs	en_US
dc.subject	Female nude in art	en_US
dc.subject	Art, Modern --20th century	en_US
dc.subject	Surrealism	en_US
dc.subject	Painting, Belgian -- 20th century	en_US
dc.title	The Menaced Assassin	en_US
dc.type	Image	en_US
dc.rights.access	Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only	en_US
dc.identifier.vendorcode	MOMA-P1999	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	Repository: Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York, United States) ID: 247.66	en_US
vra.culturalContext	Belgian	en_US
vra.technique	painting (image-making)	en_US
vra.worktype	Oil painting	en_US
dc.contributor.display	painter: René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967)	en_US