The great table by René Magritte

The great table 1963

0:00
0:00

painting, oil-paint

# 

gouache

# 

painting

# 

oil-paint

# 

landscape

# 

painted

# 

figuration

# 

oil painting

# 

geometric

# 

surrealism

Copyright: Rene Magritte,Fair Use

René Magritte made “The Great Table” with oil on canvas. The process here seems to be about making a thing appear to be something else. Look at how he renders the apple with a rocky texture, like granite or concrete. It’s not just about the color, which is a pale, dreamy, almost unreal blue-green, but the surface. It looks built up, stroke by stroke, into this solid, weighty form that seems to defy its own fruity nature. There’s this crack running down the side of the apple that really gets me. It’s so out of place, yet it totally makes sense in the context of this stony fruit. Magritte’s playing with scale and material in a way that’s similar to what his contemporary Claes Oldenburg was doing with sculpture. The way he renders the apple seems solid, but also kind of soft and malleable, like it could crumble away at any moment. Maybe that’s the point, this weird tension between the real and the unreal, the solid and the fragile.

Show more

Comments

No comments

Be the first to comment and join the conversation on the ultimate creative platform.