The Perfume of the Abyss 1928

René Magritte made this painting of mountains and towers, most likely in oil. The way the paint is applied gives a real sense of form, but also a kind of uncertainty to what we are looking at, like a sketch that has become monumental. Look at the peaks of the large mountain on the right side of the painting; the paint here is thick, applied in short, deliberate strokes. You can almost feel the weight of the rock and the chill of the shadows. But then, from the corner of our eye, we notice the small towers perched precariously on the mountain's edge, like chess pieces on some kind of other-worldly board game. Magritte plays with scale and texture to unsettle our perception. The background has a feeling of Giorgio de Chirico about it, that same unsettling, dreamlike quality, reminding us that art is never about fixed meanings, but a space where we can keep on thinking and feeling our way through the world.