Le Sabbat 1959

René Magritte created this painting of a painting, Le Sabbat, using oil on canvas. I can imagine Magritte carefully choosing each object – apples, a pitcher, a wine glass, positioning them with a kind of surreal logic. You can see how he toys with the idea of representation by placing a painting on an easel within a painting. The sky, the balustrade, and the distant trees beyond remind me of stage sets. What’s real and what’s an illusion? He takes mundane objects and defamiliarizes them. He inverts our expectations, right? It’s that kind of gesture that makes me excited to paint. And he wasn’t alone in this endeavor; Giorgio de Chirico did something similar by placing everyday objects in dreamlike spaces. Magritte invites us to question our perceptions. And, in the end, he challenges our understanding of reality, something many artists continue to do, each in their own way.