Detective novels, Persian queens, horse bells, German philosophy. Behind each surreal piece from the Opening Ceremony & Magritte collection is a painting whose story is even stranger. "When I began researching Magritte's body of work to select paintings for OC's collection, I was amazed not only by how complex and diverse his art is, but also by how uncannily it calls to mind the dream images and moments we've all experienced in everyday life," said OC founder Humberto Leon. To make your everyday life a little more dreamy, we've combed the art history books to create a guide to the Magritte paintings that appear in OC's collection. You don't need a BA in art history to rock these pieces, but won't it sound cool when you explain the role of Hegelian dialectics in your Hegel's Holiday Handkerchief Top? Yeah, we thought so.
Shop all Opening Ceremony & Magritte HERE
![]()
The Lovers, 1928: The rumored origins behind Magritte's inspiration for The Lovers are fascinating and disturbing. As the story goes, at a young age the artist witnessed the police fishing out the body of his mother from a river, after she committed suicide by drowning. The memory of her face obscured by her nightdress was so traumatic to Magritte that it became a recurring motif in his work.![]()
![]()
La Double Réalité, 1936: In a letter to friend and fellow surrealist André Breton, postmarked March 19, 1936, Magritte explained his process for La Double Réalité. “It was the reading of a detective novel that put me on the scent, if I may say so; the relevant phrase was something like this: 'this clue is as obvious as the nose on your face,’ and the person thus addressed immediately grasped his nasal appendix. I felt at once that it takes very little to destroy ‘likeness’ and make us see the face, or rather that a face only shows us colors and that awareness of this phenomenon is a sort of illumination. It occurred to me that way of bringing about this awareness might be to show an amorphous shape next to the face and with the same colors as the face. I perfected the method by putting next to the face a rigorously determined amorphous shape: that of the face itself turned upside down.”
![]()
The King’s Museum, 1966: The King’s Museum is one of Magritte’s trompe-l'œil masterpieces. In it, a man’s body, transparent like a window, leads the viewers' gaze to the landscape beyond. The painting
Shop all Opening Ceremony & Magritte HERE
The Lovers, 1928: The rumored origins behind Magritte's inspiration for The Lovers are fascinating and disturbing. As the story goes, at a young age the artist witnessed the police fishing out the body of his mother from a river, after she committed suicide by drowning. The memory of her face obscured by her nightdress was so traumatic to Magritte that it became a recurring motif in his work.
Sheherazade, 1950: This painting is undoubtedly inspired by legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights. In the tale, the Persian king marries a new virgin every day and orders the previous day’s wife to be beheaded. Sheherazade bravely volunteered to sleep with the king and tell him a story, and when day broke and she was not yet finished with her narrative, the king spared her life, eager to hear the end. Sheherazade put off her death by telling the king 1,000 stories for 1,001 nights. When she was done, the king fell in love with her and made her queen.
La Double Réalité, 1936: In a letter to friend and fellow surrealist André Breton, postmarked March 19, 1936, Magritte explained his process for La Double Réalité. “It was the reading of a detective novel that put me on the scent, if I may say so; the relevant phrase was something like this: 'this clue is as obvious as the nose on your face,’ and the person thus addressed immediately grasped his nasal appendix. I felt at once that it takes very little to destroy ‘likeness’ and make us see the face, or rather that a face only shows us colors and that awareness of this phenomenon is a sort of illumination. It occurred to me that way of bringing about this awareness might be to show an amorphous shape next to the face and with the same colors as the face. I perfected the method by putting next to the face a rigorously determined amorphous shape: that of the face itself turned upside down.”
The King’s Museum, 1966: The King’s Museum is one of Magritte’s trompe-l'œil masterpieces. In it, a man’s body, transparent like a window, leads the viewers' gaze to the landscape beyond. The painting