La Chambre de Madame Sundheim 1962

Here's Magritte, with a painting of a room—or is it a building? He’s got a flat matte surface going on with a strange light source that glows from within the dollhouse-like structure. I can imagine Magritte carefully layering his oils, trying to make this world so exact, so controlled, yet so…off. The color palette is muted and strange, a powdery blue-gray that seeps into the floorboards. The walls are a similar color but darker, like a bruised shadow. It’s a world that’s both familiar and foreign, a room within a room, a house inside a house. Like those Russian dolls, you keep opening them up, and they never end. It feels claustrophobic, even, as if the space is collapsing in on itself, yet there is a window with some moonlight shining through. This dreamlike painting feels like a quiet conversation, a visual poem, and a door into the world of Surrealism.