“The Son of Man” a painting by Rene Magritte

This painting, hides, behind its innocuous facade the very fundamental contradictions in human perception and thought processes.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well

The apple in the painting serves to hide the face of the man in the bowler hat. This happens constantly in real life. There is an innate curious interest that is aroused on seeing something hidden. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present i.e. our mind struggles to leave a hidden image the way it is – hidden. The mind instead seeks to fill in the missing information with suppositions thereby satisfying our craving for completeness.

Experience has taught us to presume that there is a face behind the apple, so, in turn; we readily imagine a continuity to fill in the masked area. One must rethink the ease with which we unconsciously "fill in" what is hidden and the unquestioned faith that we place in our suppositions.