The mark 1948

René Magritte made this painting called 'The Mark,' out of oil on canvas. Magritte’s process feels so present here, not just in the image, but in the way the paint sits on the canvas. Look at how the brushstrokes are so visible in the sun. It’s like he's laying down each stroke with intention, letting the colors mix optically rather than blending them all together. The texture is key to the experience of this piece. There's a tension between the smooth, almost surreal quality of the objects themselves, and the rough, tactile quality of the paint. Take the meat, for example. That fleshy pink blob sits so unnervingly on that garish green plaid, yet the texture of the paint makes it feel so real, so present. It reminds me a little of Picabia, that playful sense of subversion, but Magritte always has this unsettling edge. He embraces ambiguity, invites us to question what we see, and maybe, even to question the very nature of seeing itself.