The Listening Room


The Listening Room is an oil on canvas painting by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte which is currently part of the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. A later version of the painting was made in 1958 and is held in a private collection.
Both paintings feature identical green apples, but place them in different rooms. In the 1952 version, the room has wood flooring and a glass window with white trim. In the 1958 version, this is replaced by a gray brick room with an arched open-air window.
The painting highlights a number of themes common in Magritte's work. Other paintings to prominently feature an apple include The Son of Man, where the apple obscures the face of bowler-hatted man, and This is not an Apple, where an apple is accompanied by the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pomme" . It is also one of many paintings to play with the concept of scale by juxtaposing objects normally of different sizes. In Elective Affinities an egg is pictured filling a birdcage, in The Tomb of the Wrestlers a red rose fills a room and in Personal Values common household objects such as a comb, a glass and a bar of soap dwarf the usual furniture in a bedroom.
The 1958 reproduction of the painting was used for the album cover of Beck-Ola by The Jeff Beck Group.
It was also used in "Heart Attack" by Loona as an interactive scenario.