Note to the viewer:

I thought I might use a visual cliche of our time – Magritte’s everyman – to express the idea that art is mystery, continuity and history.
I’m also convinced that in an age of computer manipulation, surrealism has become banal, a shadow of its former self.
The phrase ‘Art is whatever’ expresses the current inclusiveness that surrounds art-making – a sort of ‘it ain’t what you do, it’s the way you do it’ notion.
The shadow of Magritte falls across the central part of the poster a poetic event that occurs as the shadow man isolates the word ‘hat’, hidden in the word ‘whatever’.
The four hats in the poster suggest how art might be defined: as a thing itself, the worth of the thing, the shadow of the thing, and the shape of the thing. Whatever.”

Milton Glaser at TED1998