- Source: The Treachery of Images
The Treachery of Images (French: La Trahison des Images) is a 1929 painting by Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. It is also known as This Is Not a Pipe, Ceci n'est pas une pipe and The Wind and the Song. It is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
The painting shows an image of a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (pronounced [sə.si ne paz‿yn pip], French for "This is not a pipe".)
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!
The theme of pipes with the text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is extended in Les Mots et Les Images, La Clé des Songes, Ceci n'est pas une pipe (L'air et la chanson), The Tune and Also the Words, Ceci n’est pas une pomme, and Les Deux Mystères.
The painting is sometimes given as an example of meta message like the Alfred Korzybski's "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory", as well as Denis Diderot's This is not a story.
On December 15, 1929, Paul Éluard and André Breton published an essay about poetry in La Révolution surréaliste (The Surrealist Revolution) as a reaction to the publication by poet Paul Valéry "Notes sur la poésie" in Les Nouvelles littéraires of September 28, 1929. When Valéry wrote "Poetry is a survival", Breton and Éluard made fun of it and wrote "Poetry is a pipe", as a reference to Magritte's painting.
In the same edition of La Révolution surréaliste, Magritte published "Les mots et les images" (his founding text which illustrated where words play with images), his answer to the survey on love, and Je ne vois pas la [femme] cachée dans la forêt, a painting tableau surrounded by photos of sixteen surrealists with their eyes closed, including Magritte himself.
See also
List of paintings by René Magritte
Direct and indirect realism – Debate in the philosophy of mind
Self-reference – Sentence, idea or formula that refers to itself
Simulacra and Simulation – 1981 book by Jean Baudrillard
Subtext – Aspect of communication that is not explicitly announced
Theory of forms – Philosophical theory attributed to Plato
References
Further reading
Allmer, Patricia. René Magritte: Beyond Painting, Manchester University Press, 2009. ISBN 0719079284.
Harkness, James, ed. Michel Foucault: This Is Not a Pipe, University of California Press, 2008. ISBN 0520236947.
External links
G.S. Evans (2005). "This could be a pipe: Foucault, irrealism and Ceci n'est pas une pipe". irreal (re)views.
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Torn Curtain
- The Dream Chapter: Eternity
- René Magritte
- Elizabeth Bentley
- Michael Biehn
- The Treachery of Images
- René Magritte
- One and Three Chairs
- 2025 in public domain
- Strange loop
- Self-reference
- The Empire of Light
- That '90s Show (The Simpsons)
- Magritte Museum
- List of paintings by René Magritte