The pictorial content 1947

This bizarre and funny painting was made by René Magritte, though when is anyone's guess! It's a free-wheeling combination of representation and abstraction; the image is built up from drips and brushstrokes, coagulating into the figure of a businessman. You know, it's like he's painted from the inside out. I bet Magritte was thinking about Sigmund Freud when he was making this. The surface is very active, with thin layers of paint washed over one another to create depth and luminosity. The whole scene is bathed in a surreal light, like a dream or a hallucination. It reminds me a little bit of Philip Guston's later paintings, though of course Magritte got there first! Painting allows for this kind of ambiguity; it embraces uncertainty and allows for multiple interpretations, rather than fixed or definitive readings. Artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, riffing on one another's ideas.