Le monde poétique II 1937

René Magritte, who lived from 1898 to 1967, made this dreamlike painting, and I can only imagine what he might have been thinking about while he made it. The canvas is divided into three sections. Sky, stage, and a middle register, occupied by an eyeball connected to a wormlike tail and some white triangles. All the objects are rendered very smoothly, almost mechanically, as if the artist was not even there. But he is. The curtains on either side look like tubes of paint, squeezed from their container. The sky looks cracked as if it's been baked in the sun and then dunked in icy water. As I look at the painting, I realize that the artist is inviting me to look at his brain and its contents. He does this with the confidence of one who knows there is so much more to painting than just what meets the eye.