The Magritte exhibit at SF MOMA is quite marvelous. Given recent soul searching and deeper understanding surrounding family systems/issues and the necessity to cut the ties, this painting stood out for me.
The MOMA caption reads, Magritte believed that certain “secret of affinities” existed between unlikely pairs of objects. “We know the bird in the cage,” he commented, but “it is more interesting to replace the bird with a fish, or a shoe.” While presenting a flower with a dagger may at first seem as arbitrary as showing a shoe in a cage, these items do share a connection, as the prick of the rose’s thorns is mirrored and amplified by its weaponry. When it comes to matters of the heart which is mightier, the rose or the sword?