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| René Magritte, "Empire of Light (L'Empire des lumières)" (1953-54). Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice. Click here for image URL |
There is nothing visually spectacular about this painting, apart from the combination of night and day. The candy clouds give an unsettling aura, contrasting, yet enhancing the incomprehensible darkness below it. The surrealist setting of this "peacefully idyllic" scene in the other hand seems so natural that it is believed to be possible. Magritte plays with paradoxical combinations over and over in his paintings, from the pipe which isn't a pipe ("The Treachery of Images"), to the impossibility of a floating apple in front of a man's face ("Son of a Man").
I chose this image for two reasons, its been three years I have been confronted with it at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice. Every time I tried to look away, it called me back to it. Though a surrealist artist, there is timeless quality to his work which makes it enchanting until present time. Today, the 21st of November, Magritte would be celebrating his 115th birthday.
Happy Birthday, René Magritte.
