Gioconda 1964

René Magritte made "Gioconda" with oil on canvas, and the way he handles paint, it's like he's saying, "Hey, art is a process of unveiling, not just depicting." Look at those curtains, right? They're so deliberately flat, yet they frame a patch of sky so convincingly real. It's a push and pull between the fake and the genuine. The surface is smooth, almost like glass, and the colors are so controlled. But then you notice the little imperfections, the tiny variations in the stripes of the curtains, and you realize it's all done by hand. It's in this tension between the mechanical and the handmade that the magic happens. Magritte reminds me of de Chirico, in the way he uses dreamlike imagery to question our perception of reality. It’s this ongoing conversation, this playful exchange of ideas about what art can be. It's like they're both saying, "Don't get too comfortable with what you think you know."