La Géante. 

René Magritte made *La Géante* using oil on canvas, which is a traditional choice, but the way he deploys it is far from academic. Here, he’s using a realist technique to paint an impossible scene. Look at the trompe-l'œil effect of the stone wall, for instance. It looks almost like an actual dry-stone construction, but the way it abuts a flat painted sky gives the game away. There is a tension created by the artist's labor, which appears to have been a great investment of time. Magritte was always interested in how the world appears on the surface, and how appearances can deceive. This has a lot to do with the rise of mass media in the 20th century. The image starts to take over from lived reality. Mass media is a vehicle for surrealism, because it confronts you with things that you wouldn’t think belong together. By employing these methods in his paintings, Magritte encourages us to question the way we perceive the world around us.