Art: Mystery Maker

Object by object and figure by figure, the paintings and drawings now on show in Manhattan's Albert Landry Galleries are sharp and clear and natural, but taken as a whole they make sights that no one ever saw. One painting shows a huge rose filling an entire room. In another, loaves of French bread float by the window. In still another, a huge boulder, crowned by a castle, hovers over the sea: This sort of thing could be mere gimmickry, but in the hands of Belgium's Rene Magritte it rarely fails. "For me," he says, "art is the means of evoking...