In Popular Culture
The 1960s brought a great increase in public awareness of Magritte's work. Thanks to his "sound knowledge of how to present objects in a manner both suggestive and questioning", his works have been frequently adapted or plagiarized in advertisements, posters, book covers and the like. Examples include album covers such as Beck-Ola by The Jeff Beck Group (reproducing Magritte's The Listening Room), Jackson Browne's 1974 album Late for the Sky, with artwork inspired by Magritte's The Empire of Light (L'Empire des Lumières), Oregon's album Out of the Woods referring to Carte Blanche, and the Firesign Theatre's album Just Folks... A Firesign Chat based on The Mysteries of the Horizon.
Tom Stoppard has written a surrealist play called After Magritte.
Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach uses Magritte works for many of its illustrations.
Paul Simon's song "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog after the War", inspired by a photograph of Magritte by Lothar Wolleh, appears on the 1983 album Hearts and Bones.
Magritte's imagery has inspired filmmakers ranging from the surrealist Marcel Mariën to mainstream directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Bernardo Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg and Terry Gilliam.
According to Ellen Burstyn, in the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: 25 Years of "The Exorcist", the iconic poster shot for the film The Exorcist was inspired by Magritte's L'Empire des Lumières.
In 2010, the music video of Koolhaus by Markus Schulz under his Dakota guise was inspired from the works of Magritte.
In John Green's book The Fault in Our Stars, released 2012, the protagonist Hazel wears a shirt with René Magritte's famous "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") on it whilst visiting her favourite author, Peter Van Houten.
The cover of the album The Grand Illusion by Styx is inspired by Magritte's work.
Read more about this topic: René Magritte
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