Paysage de Baucis (Landscape of Baucis) 1966

This etching by René Magritte, "Paysage de Baucis", presents a very particular kind of landscape: a man without a head! Magritte’s mark-making is so precise, so controlled. I imagine him, bending over the plate, scratching away with incredible focus. What must he have been thinking, creating this headless man? Is it a sly joke? A commentary on the banality of modern life? I love the way he separates out features – eyes, nose, mouth – and suspends them in space under that hat. It makes me think about the power of images, how we assemble them in our minds to make meaning. And how Magritte, like all great artists, invites us to question those assumptions, to see the world in new and unexpected ways. He is in dialogue with the Dadaists and Surrealists, of course, but also speaks to a long history of artists exploring the relationship between representation and reality.