Le Rendez-Vous 1937

René Magritte made this strange and beautiful painting, with paint and canvas of course, and I wonder what it was like for him? I imagine Magritte thinking about symbolism, about what things mean, and then painting things that stand for other things. It’s raining, and the rain is painted as straight grey lines. There's this kind of portal or billboard in the center of the canvas with images on it. The colors are muted, the composition is still and balanced, like he’s trying to figure something out. But what? It’s almost as if the grey, eye-filled clouds are watching over the scene. Painting is like slow thinking, it’s something that emerges as you keep going. So what does this piece mean? Is it like other surrealist painters? Maybe, but it's more like a clue than a puzzle. Painters are always in conversation with each other, reaching back through time. There's always a painter looking at another painter, and that is how art keeps going. It’s ambiguous, and there are many ways of reading what Magritte is doing here, but that’s the beauty of painting, isn't it?