House Of Mirrors

Magritte was a Surrealist, known for his juxtaposition of objects in ways that make the viewer work to see past the individual elements to the image as a whole, thereby forcing a reevaluation of the meaning of the objects as they relate to the idea conveyed by the image.

“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.” -- René Magritte

Genuinely one of my favorite paintings of his, I could write so many papers about the various interpretations of the image. A non-zero amount of those papers might perhaps interrogate my enjoyment of this painting, Magrittes Surrealist philosophy, his preoccupation with the hidden, and my fascination with Sleep Token, both as a band and as a work of art or theater (don't @ me I have so many thoughts).

All of this to say, when I saw critial1611s artwork, I sprinted to one of my Discord servers to scream about it in an artwork prompts thread... and someone answered!!!!!!!

Behold! "The Lovers" by seb (link is to its Instagram)

I was probably being a lil weird on the server about how much I loved it, but I was squealing and kicking my feet to see my imagination visualized so clearly. The kiss! The fabric! The necklaces! The clear representation of real life in the style and design of their masks and their sizes (tallest and smallest) (I'm placing ii on the drum stand, since iii is leaning up)!

And the papers I could write!! A discussion of the potential meanings of "closed eyes vs open eyes" in this version versus the original painting; the hierarchical implications of height placement wrt the sizes of the band members, their chronological entrances to the band, and their stage personas; the meanings that could be found in the twisting of the fabric (seb pointed out that in Magritte's painting, the twisting of the fabric on the left figure sort of looked like a hand wrapping around the back of their head, and included that in its artwork) when compared to their real-life masks; a mirror of the discourse surrounding the OG re the closeness of the figures without a confirmation of their arms or hands touching, and what it could say when viewed through the lenses of sexuality and gender; the connotations of a kiss in the doorway; AND MANY MORE!

"You're really into this painting, wow!" Yeah, it's my neurodivergent obsession with symbolism, metaphors, and the incurably fuzzy, individualized interpretation of images in artwork.