La Belle hérétique 1964

René Magritte painted this puzzle of an image, La Belle hérétique, sometime in the 20th century. He's given us a chair, sort of. Or, is it a coffin on a cruise? I can only imagine what he was thinking, the mad hatter. The wood grain looks pretty convincing, but there's something off. Like a magician's trick, where you know you're being fooled, but you're still captivated. Magritte had a knack for that, twisting the familiar just enough to make you question what you're seeing. The hardware, like the handles, and the nails remind me of Surrealist objects by Giacometti or Oppenheim, but more rigid. There's an ongoing conversation between artists across time. Magritte is dead, but his paintings keep living on, inviting us to play along with his strange games of the mind. You can’t help but wonder, what's he trying to tell us with this beautiful heretic?