Curator Anne Umland talks about the life and work of surrealist painter Rene Magritte. The exhibition “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary” is on view at MoMA through January 12.  

Although he was known for his Surrealist work, Magritte had created quasi-Cubist, Futurist, and Abstract paintings, and Anne Umland talked about “how radically inventive and imaginative” the Belgian painter was. 

Magritte’s titles rarely match the subject of the work – that’s because he thought of the titles as a protective device that prevented “overly facile or simple readings of his works.” And, as for his famous painting of a pipe with the caption “Ce n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”), Umland explained that Magritte would argue that “no one could smoke his pipe, so therefore it wasn’t one.”

Umland said she hoped to capture the essence of Magritte’s work with the exhibition’s title, The Mystery of the Ordinary, and the artist’s “uncanny ability to make everyday objects look different, look mysterious, look strange. Or conversely: to make the strange begin to look familiar.”