The living mirror 1929

René Magritte made this painting, The Living Mirror, with oil on canvas, and it's just so him, right? I think what grabs me is the way he uses the words as objects, almost like shapes, in the composition. The black text is so sharp, so deliberate, it's like he's saying, "Hey, language is part of this picture too, not just a label." Look at the sandy colour in the foreground, it is so flat, so unlike the way painters are taught to create illusion. For me, this really amplifies how present the painting is as a thing in itself. The words are carefully placed, each in its own lozenge of space, and you can feel the space around them as if it is charged somehow. It makes you think about how we see and name things, and how slippery that all is. This piece really makes me think of Jasper Johns and his flags, but I find Magritte's work to be a bit more naughty, somehow. It is just so great how art lets us ask questions rather than giving us answers.