The Art Institute Wants You To Unthink Magritte

• Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © Charly Herscovici
• Magritte’s The False Mirror

For the past few weeks ads across Chicago have given passersby a bold command: Unthink.

The exhibition doesn’t deny Magritte’s hip recognizability. Everything from its promotional video to its engagement marketing milks the symbols that have cemented his coolness. There’s the bowler hat, worn by Magritte himself in street-pole banner ads. Then there are blue skies, black suits, and irises a la The False Mirror mixed into the marketing campaign. Inside the Art Institute pillowy cumulus clouds, courtesy of HMR Designs, hover over visitors’ heads in the Griffin Court entryway, and an assortment of ties and pipes are on sale at the museum gift shop.

“Living in an age of mobile phones, in which we are so used to acquiring all sorts of information with great speed . . . has resulted in a loss of the ability to let a picture really take us into its own world,” says D’Alessandro. “We surf the web and tap images on handheld devices.”