Narrator: Many Surrealists sought to tap into the subconscious by letting a work of art unfold as they created it—a technique called automatism. As conservator Scott Gerson explains, that was not Magritte’s approach.
Conservator, Scott Gerson: I would feel very comfortable saying that this was a very planned-out image. The types of things that you would expect to see in a collage where an artist was working through an image and maybe removing and changing the position of collage elements—quite frequently, you see a lot of glue across the surface of the work, maybe even traces of a collage element being pasted down and then being removed and put into another position—there's nothing like that on this surface. This is a very clean surface.
Narrator: By examining this collage under magnification and noting where forms overlapped, Gerson and other conservators have gathered clues about Magritte’s process.
Scott Gerson: The first step was most likely to draw the rider and the horse using charcoal. Then the collage elements are cut from a piece of sheet music. And then the antlers, which were a later addition after the collage elements were placed, were painted in watercolor gouache directly onto the paper primary support.
