Empty Mask, 1928 by Rene Magritte

Rene Magritte painted The Empty Mask in 1928. In the late 1920's, Magritte experimented with the concept of words and images. Here is the second one, which contains images in 5 frames. He was greatly influenced by the World War I works of Giorgio De Chirico. In 1973 this piece was purchased by the National Museum of Wales.

This style called for the combination of creating an image of important items and naming it with a significant title. This was an attempt to influence the viewer to compare the representation to words. The Empty Mask is displayed in a self-supported frame of an asymmetrical format. Magritte shows a sky, sleigh bells as decorations to a lead curtain, the frontage of a home, a form cut out of paper, a green forest and a blazing fire. In a 1929 essay, Magritte explains that each image contains another image.

There is some uncertainty about Magritte's titles. Here Magritte may be playing off of the "frame" convention: these segments can't represent because they are not presented in proper rectangular frames.