APRÈS LE BAL 1926

René Magritte made this painting, *Après le Bal*, with oils on canvas. Look at how that curtain just *falls*. It’s like the paint itself has slumped and settled, as if the party’s really over and everything's exhausted. It's as if Magritte is saying, “Here’s the stage set,” but the players have gone home. That nude figure lying there, so placid, seems to be taking centre stage, or is it just a prop? It’s hard to tell what’s what in a Magritte, isn’t it? I can almost feel him, paintbrush in hand, contemplating the scene, conjuring a world where pink geometric shapes mingle with classical nudes. He's got a real knack for making the familiar strange, like a painterly David Lynch. Painters, like all artists, keep the conversation going. They riff off each other, build on ideas, and challenge what we think we know about seeing. It's painting’s capacity to hold multiple, often contradictory meanings that makes it endlessly fascinating, right?