Fashionable people 1950

René Magritte conjured up this unreal world in "Fashionable People" with oil on canvas. The scene is set at dusk, transitioning from a deep blue to a murky rose. In the distance there's a fire burning and a single tree standing, but up close is this white sculpture of a head – or is it a pawn from a chess set? You can see a lot of Giorgio de Chirico in this painting; the colour palette, the composition, and that eerie sense of the uncanny. It's that chess piece that does it for me. Imagine Magritte, carefully rendering its smooth, pale surface against the eerie backdrop. It’s like he’s staging a play, but he left out the actors, and the sets are all wrong. It’s a painting that invites you to pause, to question, and to reimagine the world around you. Magritte and de Chirico did that for me, and I’m still thinking about it.