Imp of the Perverse 1927

René Magritte made this oil painting, Imp of the Perverse, on canvas. The canvas is primed with thin layers of dark colour, and then the shapes are built up, the wood grain is rendered very delicately. It makes me think about how an image can come from anywhere and be anything. I love the way the wooden shapes are arranged in front of that brooding seascape, it feels like the dark romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich has been given a very strange makeover. Look at how the brushstrokes are really visible in the rendering of the sea and sky but that the wood itself is highly finished. This gives it a tactile, slightly odd quality. Magritte is a big influence on so many artists. The way he brings together different languages of painting, different ideas of representation, that feels very relevant to a lot of contemporary work. But there's no other painter like him.