kingdom of belgium interwarconcept:era modern
The Treachery of Images
Oil on canvas (1929) by René Magritte depicting a pipe above the caption 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe). The philosophical core of Magritte's Surrealism: images are representations, not things.
Scholarly Significance
Magritte's Treachery of Images anchors Surrealism's philosophical dimension: the gap between sign and referent. A key work for iconography, conceptual art ancestry, and semiotics.
Notes
- ·René Magritte (1898–1967) painted this work in 1929 while living in Brussels.
- ·The 'pipe' is rendered with hyper-realist precision but the hand-lettered inscription below reads: 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe).
- ·Magritte's explanation: '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.'
- ·Michel Foucault devoted an entire essay to the work — 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' (1968, published 1973) — analysing the relationship between image and text, sign and referent.
- ·The work exists in several versions; the LACMA version (1929) is the original and most reproduced.
- ·Acquired by LACMA in 1978.