A taste of the invisible 1927

René Magritte painted "A Taste of the Invisible" with oil on canvas, and what strikes me first is the boldness of his vision. The marks are laid down with certainty, a kind of declarative confidence in the unreal. The texture is smooth, almost like a sign painter's work, yet the landscape elements are soft and hazy, with none of the detail you might expect. Take those cloud-like puffs of black, for example; each one is carefully placed, like punctuation in a dream. Then there are those twin monoliths of white, which cut through the scene like, I don't know, a stage set? Magritte is often compared to de Chirico, and you can see it in the unsettling stillness. But Magritte’s touch is lighter, somehow. He doesn't so much want to scare you as make you question what you think you see.