Narrator: The title, The Menaced Assassin, provides one enigmatic clue into the possible meanings of this monumental work.
Curator, Anne Umland : You see a space that is, in fact, comprised of three distinct parts. A sort of perspective from a voyeur outside, within which two bowler-hatted impassive men lurk, one with a cudgel in his hand on the left, and the other with a net. This marks the first appearance of figures like this in Magritte's work. But they would go on to become stock personas in his art.
And then as you enter into this deep space with its peculiarly tilting floor your eye drawn into the center you encounter the figure on the right of another suited man, apparently listening to music on an old-fashioned phonograph, oblivious, so it seems, to what lies behind him.
Narrator: Many Surrealists, including Magritte, were fans of the era's crime and detective stories and this composition refers to a scene from a silent film adaptation of a crime novel from the popular Fantomas series.
Anne Umland: And so it's another way of thinking about Magritte's ambition to create an immersive world akin in some way to cinema, and to thinking of the canvas as a projection screen for these fantastical narratives and mysterious scenes. What he presents us with is this mystery that will never be solved.