The Human Condition

Before a window stands an easel holding a painting of exactly the landscape that lies beyond the glass, so that the painted scene seamlessly continues - and conceals - the real view behind it. Rene Magritte uses the Human Condition to pose a quiet riddle about images and reality: the picture both shows the world and blocks it, standing in for what it hides. Now in Washington's National Gallery, it is among his most elegant philosophical paintings - a deadpan meditation on how every representation simultaneously reveals and replaces the thing it depicts.