Good faith 1965

René Magritte’s painting shows a man in a bowler hat whose face is partly obscured by a pipe. I can imagine Magritte painting this, slowly, meticulously, thinking hard about the way we see the world. The sky feels dreamy, light, and a little unsettling – that thin, even paint is so important. I wonder what he was thinking, putting a pipe where a nose should be. It's a visual puzzle, a joke, but it also hints at something deeper. I mean, is it a nose or a pipe? Does it even matter? He made painting into a way of asking questions, and it resonates with other artists who play with language and image-making. What I love about this is how it gets you thinking about what painting is for. It's not just about copying what we see, but about making us see in new ways. And that kind of exchange, across time, is what keeps art alive.