Rene Magritte


Mystery-Without which no world, no thought, would be possible-corresponds to no doctrine, and does not deal with possibilities. Thus, a question such as “How is mystery possible?” is meaningless because mystery can be evoked only if we know that any possible question is relative only to what is possible.

Some mediocre or absurd things do not really cast doubt on the concept of mystery; nothing beautiful or grandiose can affect it. Judgment as to what is, was, or will be possible does not enter into the concept of mystery. Whatever its manifest nature may be, every object is mysterious: the apparent and the hidden, knowledge and ignorance, life and death, day and night. The attention we give to the mystery in everything is deemed sterile only if we overlook the higher sensibility that accompanies that attention, and if we grant a supreme value to what is possible. This higher sensibility is not possible without freedom from what we call “the laws of the possible.”

Freedom of thought alert to mystery is always possible if not actually present, whatever the nature of the possible: atrocious or attractive, mean or marvelous. It has power to evoke mystery with effective force.

The term Surrealism gives rise to confusion, and the term Realism is not suitable for the direct apprehension of reality. Surrealism is the direct knowledge of reality: reality is absolute, and unrelated to the various ways of “interpreting” it. Breton says that surrealism is the point at which the mind ceases to imagine nothingness, not the contrary. That’s fine, but if I repeat this definition I’m no more than a parrot. One must come up with an equivalent, such as: Surrealism is the knowledge of absolute thought.


“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”

I Like this quote… they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question ‘What does that mean’? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.”

“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”