The king's museum 1966

This is one of those uncanny paintings by René Magritte; the bowler-hatted man, an atmospheric landscape within. Just look at how the blue flattens and deepens within the figure’s silhouette. It's so still, so enigmatic. I bet Magritte wasn't thinking about realism when he made this, but about what it means to see, to perceive. It makes me think about dreams, where things look familiar but also strange, slightly out of sync. Look at the edges, the way one thing meets another. This way of juxtaposing things might have inspired later artists like David Salle. I wonder if he mixed his own blues or squeezed them straight from the tube. What is the king’s museum? Maybe it’s a metaphor. In the end, painting gives us a way to hold onto questions without needing all the answers. That's the magic.