Le domaine enchanté 1953

René Magritte has painted this enchanting domain with oils, creating a tranquil stage where the unexpected meets the familiar. I can imagine Magritte’s patient brushwork, layering and blending, thinking of the Old Masters, but with something else in mind entirely. Look at that woman. She is confident, almost defiant, yet she seems to be an actor in a play not of her own making. The light is smooth, yet the scene is unsettling, not unlike stepping into a dream you didn’t know you were having. Are the skies really blue rectangles, or are those windows into another world? And the sand dunes morphing into pink, sausage-like buildings! Magritte's flat, descriptive style in *Le domaine enchanté* is a challenge to painting itself. He takes the traditional means of representation and turns them into tools of surreal investigation. He questions the very nature of reality.