Elective Affinities (Magritte)

Elective Affinities (Les affinités électives) is a 1933 painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The title is taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1809 novel Elective Affinities.

Magritte had the following to say about this work:


 * One night, I woke up in a room in which a cage with a bird sleeping in it had been placed. A magnificent error caused me to see an egg in the cage, instead of the vanished bird. I then grasped a new and astonishing poetic secret, for the shock which I experienced had been provoked precisely by the affinity of two objects&mdash;the cage and the egg&mdash;to each other, whereas previously this shock had been caused by my bringing together two objects that were unrelated.