Iconic Irony

Iconic Irony from Sarah Coller on Vimeo.

The 'son of man' a self-portrait by Rene Magritte depicts a man in an overcoat and a bowler hat standing in front of a short wall, beyond which is the sea and a cloudy sky. The man's face is largely obscured by a hovering green apple.
This work as been appropriated in different ways since it's beginning; the anonymous archetypal image of every man, resonates in people.

Magritte said of the work
"At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.