A Favorite Painting 40

Rene Magritte, The Treachery of Images 1928-29

You've got to love the surrealists-- they generally had a great sense of humor. But there was a point to be made in paintings like this one. I posted a quote earlier by Jean Baudrillard, who often worked on the same theme as that expressed visually by Magritte decades earlier in work like this. The question, which was new in the age of modern modes of production (or reproduction), revolves around how we perceive things through mediated symbols. The caption translates as "This is not a pipe," and of course it isn't; rather, it is a painting representing a pipe. But just how significant is that distinction? Baudrillard, and I suspect Magritte too, sensed a growing gap between the real and the depictions of the real that dominate our discourse (by which I mean mostly mass media), which has implications for all kinds of human activities, emotions and desires (which is what advertisers, for one, count on). By labeling his picture "not a pipe," Magritte is stating a fact that does not jibe with the trained (or one might say conditioned) perception of the viewer-- how can you say that is not a pipe? But does accepting his contention mean that we have broken through to some kind of superior ultra-reality, or is it just a joke that we can laugh at and then return to the warm comfort of our collective illusions? I'll leave it an open question for you to ponder (which I imagine was Magritte's intent too).