Marine 

René Magritte made this painting, called "Marine," with oil on canvas, a thoroughly traditional medium, yet the result is anything but conventional. Magritte presents us with a plaster cast of a female torso. The surface of the cast is not the smooth, white material we might expect, but rather an illusionistic painting of sky above, and sea below. The painting technique here is critical to the work’s effect. Magritte uses thin, translucent layers of oil paint to mimic the atmospheric qualities of both the sky and water, dissolving the solidity of the sculpture. The sculpture itself implies a history of classical aesthetics, now made strange by the addition of a dreamlike landscape. In "Marine," Magritte challenges our perceptions of reality, inviting us to question the boundary between surface and substance, representation and reality. It encourages us to look beyond the surface and consider the deeper layers of meaning embedded in the everyday objects around us.