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| Elective Affinities | |
| Year: | 1933 |
| Height Metric: | 41 |
| Width Metric: | 33 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| Museum: | Private collection |
Elective Affinities (fr|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.[1]
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 - the cage and the egg - to each other, whereas previously this shock had been caused by my bringing together two objects that were unrelated.[2]