How it started:
"Here's a great idea for the [The X-Files]: build a plot line around the famous surrealist painting by Rene Magritte entitled 'The Menaced Assassin'. The most impressive quality of the whole painting is its lifelessness; with the exception of the central character, no expression at all can be read in the face of any figure, as if the whole montage were constructed of department store mannequins.

"If an entire program couldn't be concocted from this idea, it would at least make a superb promotional image for the likes of TV guide, with the faces of Mulder, Scully, Skinner and the CSM pasted into it strategically... Gillian Anderson does indeed convey a detached and expressionless quality in much of her acting, which adds to the overall surrealistic feel of the series." - Keith Masterson

_ _ _____
The Menaced Assassin_ _ ____ _ _____ Mulder Magritte

I re-created Rene Magritte's painting using Corel Photo-Paint and my large archive of X-Files images in November of 1996 based on Keith's post to alt.tv.x-files.creative. This was the first serious photo-manip work I had done at the time.

His comments:
"When it finally popped on screen I just about busted a gut laughing-my own limited visual imagination had pictured something more like the original with a few faces taped in, but you recreated the whole thing from scratch, walls and all!

"If I got it right that's the 3 Lone Gunmen at the window, with Cancer Man at the left and a distinctively funny looking character at the right who I don't recognize [Krycek], but then I only started watching last summer after the rerun of an episode with Peter Boyle playing a life insurance agent who foresaw his customers' demise.

"Particularly impressive in your version was Scully's torrid, voluptuous torso; she looks pretty good already, notably in last week's show where her and the stigmata kid seemed to be developing some real eyebrow raising chemistry. But the enhancements are, pardon the pun, 'to die for.' A whole lot better than how Magritte portrayed his victim, not that I could contemplate even an imaginary death for Scully, I prefer to believe the stain below her mouth is just too much red wine she had before passing out on the couch.

"Mulder in black and white seems appropriate somehow, it kind of focuses the attention elsewhere, where it belongs. He's at his best as a device for exposition, a necessary plot element like Tatoo on Fantasy Island, just there to explain missing details.

"Anyway it looks like you took the ball and ran with it, and produced a tiny triumph. I figure triumphs of any scale are tough to come by, so a dot matrix printout of it will decorate the wall above my computer, and I will join the elite few who can display a work of art made to their own specifications. Good luck on making a deal with TV Guide,they could use it to inspire a whole set of similar works. The only problem is the scarcity of shows anyone would really care about one way or the other, I mean you COULD morph Jayne Seymour into Mona Lisa, but what would be the point. Even Dave Letterman as one of Rembrandt's Dutch Masters seems contrived. Maybe it has more to do with the nature of the original painting itself, not many come to mind which resonate with modern TV themes like the one you worked out. You'll be the first to know if I'm smitten with any other artistic conceits, till then, my compliments on our happy collaboration. It's been a hoot!"