The Treachery of Images
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| The Treachery of Images |
| René Magritte, 1928–29 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 63.5 cm × 93.98 cm (25 in × 37 in) |
| Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California |
The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images 1928–29) is a series of paintings by Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte, famous for its inscription Ceci n'est pas une pipe (
pronunciation (help·info)), French for this is not a pipe. The paintings are currently housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California, and at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas.
The picture shows a pipe that looks as though it might come from a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe), which seems false but is actually true. The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe. As Magritte himself commented: "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe,' I'd have been lying!" (cited in Harry Torczyner, Magritte: Ideas and Images, p. 71.)
[It is my understanding that when this painting was exhibited for the first time, someone hung a photograph of Magritte next to it with the legend, "Ceci n'est pas un idiote" -- "This is not an idiot." Is this true?]
Magritte extends the style and effect in his 1930 painting The Key of Dreams.
[edit] In popular culture
Countless other works of art or entertainment have made use of the phrase "Ceci n' est pas...", a translation, or a variation on the concept of the difference between an object and its image (or symbol), one example being The Simpsons couch gag for the season nineteen episode "That 90's Show" where The Simpsons are seated on the couch with the caption, "Ceci n'est pas une couch gag". "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is also the name of a level in Lemmings 2 and in Neverball. It is also mentioned in the song "If Not Now, Whenever" by The Books, and Austin, Texas band released an EP entitled Ceci n'est pas recover.
[edit] Literary and cultural criticism
French literary critic and philosopher Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox in his 1973 book, This is not a Pipe (English edition, 1991).
In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, the painting is used as an introduction to the second chapter. McCloud points out that, not only is the version that appears in his book not a pipe, it is actually several printed copies of a drawing of a painting of a pipe.
Douglas Hofstadter also discusses this painting and other images like it in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, a treatise on formal systems and intelligence.
[edit] See also
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