The Rights of Man 1947

René Magritte's oil on canvas painting presents us with a strange collection of forms, each rendered with meticulous care. The statue is smoothly surfaced, like a lathe-turned wood form, draped with a deep red cloth, and the tuba, an instrument of mass production, blazes with unnatural flame. What’s most striking is how Magritte marries high and low, classical sculpture with a proletarian instrument, in this dreamscape. The artist deliberately challenges established hierarchies, asking us to question the value we place on certain materials and methods of production. The smooth, seemingly seamless surface of the statue implies careful craftmanship; the shiny mass produced nature of the tuba, industrial manufacture. Magritte invites us to consider whether the work of a skilled hand is inherently more valuable than that of a machine. He draws our attention to the labor involved in the making of each object. By bringing these disparate elements together, he urges us to reconsider the ways we perceive art and its relationship to the broader world of making.