Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte has been described as twentieth-century art's most subtle saboteur. Until his death in 1967, he lived an ordinary life in Brussels, save for three heady years in Paris in the 1920s, but created dozens of images of everyday objects that leave the viewer with unsettling doubts about the nature of the physical world and our perceptions of it. Magritte belongs to the same artistic circle as his German contemporary, Max Ernst, and Spain's renegade surrealist, Salvador Dali, but unlike other painters of his generation, the Belgian shied away from publicity and led a distinctly sedate life--preferring to shock through his art instead. Over a long career that spanned four decades, he produced canvases painted in a cool, precise manner that embodied a psychological impact derived from the juxtapositions of objects or words. Baguette loaves float in the sky like clouds, torso-less limbs embrace...