Perpetual motion 1935

René Magritte made this painting "Perpetual Motion," using oil on canvas, but when, nobody seems to know. I’m super curious about Magritte's process here, and what he might have been thinking when he made it. I’m really interested in the figure in the center, this character with a bodybuilder physique and a one-piece swimsuit, as well as a rather serious face attached to a grey orb for a head, performing a workout. So much of painting is intuitive, moving elements around, adding and subtracting until a composition emerges. It's as though he is in constant motion, pushing and pulling at the image until it finds its equilibrium. Maybe the figure lifting the weight is an homage to physical labor? The barrel and blocks repeated in the mirror give me a slight De Chirico vibe, who he was known to admire. Whatever it is, it feels like he's trying to tell us something about human nature, the kind of dream logic where things are both funny and deeply unsettling. Artists are in an ongoing dialogue across time and place, and I’m always fascinated by the way they inspire each other’s creativity.