Elective Affinities (painting)

Elective Affinities (French: Les affinités électives) is a 1933 painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The title is taken from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Elective Affinities.^[1]

Magritte had the following to say about this work:

One night, I woke up in a room in which a cage with a bird sleeping in it had been placed. A magnificent error caused me to see an egg in the cage, instead of the vanished bird. I then grasped a new and astonishing poetic secret, for the shock which I experienced had been provoked precisely by the affinity of two objects -- the cage and the egg -- to each other, whereas previously this shock had been caused by my bringing together two objects that were unrelated.^[2]

References

1. ^ Gablik, Suzi, Magritte. Thames & Hudson, New York (2000), pg 101.
2. ^ Quoted in Paquet, Marcel, Magritte. Taschen (2006), Koln, Germany, pg. 26.