Youth 1924

René Magritte made this painting with oils, and it’s all about how images create their own kind of reality. Magritte isn't just painting what he sees, he's inventing a way of seeing. The colours feel dreamlike, slightly muted. It's like he’s mixed in a bit of fog with each pigment. Look at how the image is built from small brushstrokes, almost like tiles, which create a fractured, shimmering surface. There's a real push and pull between abstraction and representation going on. Then, there’s the surface texture - you can almost feel the brushstrokes, thick in some places, thin in others. It makes you think about the physical act of painting. And that strange, abstracted figure in the center, almost lost among the angular shapes, she reminds me of Picasso, but also maybe Francis Picabia and other painters who were questioning the way images are constructed. It is as if the painting is in dialogue with all these artists across time. It’s like they’re all in a room together, arguing about what a painting can be.