Le baiser c. 1957

René Magritte, at an unknown date, made this painting, Le baiser, probably in oil on canvas. Look at that big blue bird flying right across the canvas! It's kind of cartoonish in its simplicity, but what's inside is really where it gets interesting. Magritte fills the bird's silhouette with a night sky. And there's a tiny crescent moon! I wonder what he was thinking when he decided to put the night sky inside a bird. Maybe he felt like he was on a voyage, like we all are, through life. He may have been thinking about flight as freedom, about dreams, and the unconscious. And maybe he wanted to show us how all these things are connected. Painters are constantly responding to each other’s work, building on the ideas of the past, trying to push painting in new directions. The act of painting is, after all, like a form of thinking. It embraces doubt and ambiguity, inviting multiple interpretations, rather than fixed meanings.