The Telescope: What We See and What We Don't

Written by Bianca Nguyen

René Magritte is a Belgian painter known by girls and boys as one of the most familiar faces in the Surrealist movement, emerging into the art world through his enigmatic distorted images, often encouraging his viewers to question what they truly see and what they don’t, or in other words, their perception of realism, to critique the subjectivity of truth. And his painting ‘The Telescope', or ‘La Lunette De L'approche’, is a prime example of what he had set out to do as a painter and an artist. By portraying a telescope that’s not actually a telescope, Magritte uses realism to challenge how we understand what’s in front of us and what’s not.

 figure 1. “La Lunette D’approche”  https://www.thehistoryofart.org/

The Telescope was painted in 1963 with an oil-on-canvas medium with the dimensions of 176.1 × 114.9 cm. At first glance, it’s simple. Two open glass windows, reflecting a blue sky with white clouds. No dreamlike colours or fantastical objects hanging in mid-air, a rare outlier compared to the rest of his works. Magritte’s distortion lies not in the telescope itself but instead in the entire painting as a whole. Why name the painting The Telescope without the telescope? Why depict an easy, forgettable scene when you’re known for thought-provoking images? What makes this painting a Magritte original is that it makes you ask questions. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, by utilising a simplistic style, it creates a false sense of tranquillity and calm among its viewers. 

There are two major symbols in this painting: the window and the ‘telescope’. Typically, throughout the history of art, telescopes have been seen as symbols of innovation, progression, and capability, as they can see much further than the human eye can. It is revered as the pinnacle of human innovation, bringing civilisation a step closer to the sky, offering knowledge of what’s beyond the reach of our hands. Yet in this painting, the telescope is not only absent but also shows us an unlit image in contrast to the paradisiac scenery shown on the window panes. This causes viewers to come to the realisation that a telescope would be the most useless thing needed in this picture, hitting home the message: reality is not quite what it seems. The night outside the dreamy morning sky shown in the windows is dark and unknown. And while a telescope can be used to see objects beyond stars, it wouldn’t help us to see what we need to see the most: what merely is behind the night. Through this Magritte questions the need for a device like such and, more importantly, the need for sci-fi-natured innovations in mundane day-to-day life. The windows show us paradise because, through similar inventions, we hope to achieve a beautiful future. The telescope represents the innovations of man, and its lack thereof in the painting symbolises what Magritte perceives to be its unimportance in the world. And finally, the difference between their projections represents the difference between our perception of reality and what reality actually is.

It can be said that René Magritte is commenting on man’s inherent desire to innovate, create, and explore. Our carnal desire to progress forward in order to satisfy our own vanity. We muster up our best effort to invent a telescope in order to see into outer space, but the plain reality is that looking into the stars doesn’t actually make our lives any easier, for all there is out there is darkness. Through his cynical attitude towards modern society, Magritte creates a painting, much in fashion with his other works, that forces the viewers to question their own eyes while critiquing the growing modernity as life passes and society progresses in the 20th century. 

References:

Gurney, Tom. “The Telescope by Rene Magritte.” Thehistoryofart.org, TheHistoryOfArt.org, 2020, www.thehistoryofart.org/rene-magritte/telescope/.

Mattei, Selena. “Perception and Reality in the Art of René Magritte.” ArtMajeur Online Art Gallery, ARTMAJEUR, 19 June 2024, www.artmajeur.com/en/magazine/8-meet-and-discover/perception-and-reality-in-the-art-of-rene-magritte/335623.

“The Telescope (La Lunette d’Approche) - Menil.” Menil.org, 2025, www.menil.org/collection/objects/192-the-telescope-la-lunette-d-approche.