The Treachery of Images

The Treachery of Images

Artist	René Magritte
Year	1928–29 (1928–29)
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	63.5 cm × 93.98 cm (25 in × 37 in)
Location	Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California[1]

The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images, 1928–29, sometimes translated as The Treason of Images) is a painting by the Belgian René Magritte, painted when Magritte was 30 years old. The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ( pronunciation (help·info)), French for "This is not a pipe." The painting is not a pipe, but rather an image of a pipe, which was Magritte's point:

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!^[2]

The theme of pipes with the text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is extended in his 1966 painting, Les Deux Mystères.^[3]

Literary and cultural comment

A neuroscientific variant, featuring a neuron obtained from ray tracing.^[4]

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).

Scott McCloud uses this painting as an introduction to the second chapter of his book Understanding Comics. 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.^[5]

Douglas Hofstadter also discusses this painting and other images like it in Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, a work on cognition and consciousness.^[6]

The title echoes that of Denis Diderot's story Ceci n'est pas un conte ("This is not a story").^[7]

See also

• Map-territory relation
• Self-reference
• Simulacra and Simulation
• Symbolism
• Representative realism

References

1. ^ La Trahison des images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), 1929, Painting, Oil on canvas. Purchased with funds provided by the Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection (78.7). On public view: Ahmanson Building 2nd Floor.
2. ^ Torczyner, Harry. Magritte: Ideas and Images. p. 71. 
3. ^ "Olga's Gallery". http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte54.html. Retrieved 3 October 2010. 
4. ^ "PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 4(12) December 2008". PLoS Computational Biology 4 (12): ev04.ei12. 2008. doi:10.1371/image.pcbi.v04.i12.  edit
5. ^ McCloud, Scott (1994). Understanding Comics. New York: HarperPerennial. pp. 24–25. ISBN 006097625X. 
6. ^ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1999) [1979]. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books. p. 699. ISBN 0465026567. 
7. ^ Ceci n'est pas un conte

Further reading

• Allmer, Patricia. René Magritte: Beyond Painting, Manchester University Press, 2009. ISBN 0719079284.

External links

• This could be a pipe: Foucault, irrealism and Ceci n'est pas une pipe essay in irreal (re)views