The forest 1927

This is one wild painting by René Magritte! It is a head—or, rather, a headscape—rendered with an almost unsettling realism. You can see the ghostly face through a forest of branches. I can only imagine Magritte wrestling with the question of identity, the relationship between the inner self and the outer world. What a trip it must have been for him to make this painting! The smooth surface of the dark cylinder beneath the head makes me think about the material qualities of the painting. The brown and green pigment is handled so carefully to create the illusion of three dimensions. The soft yellows of the background and its vertical movement offer contrast to the earthy tones of the forest head, giving the painting a dreamlike feeling. I think of artists like Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico who were similarly conjuring strange and dreamlike scenes. Painting is a way for artists to talk to each other across time, you know? This piece reminds me that art is an ongoing conversation.