René Magritte — The Treachery of Images

A pipe is painted. Beneath it, a sentence in French reads: “This is not a pipe.”

The statement is correct. Tobacco cannot be placed inside the painted pipe, nor can it be held between the lips. It is not an object but an image of an object. Magritte exposed a difference so obvious that we usually forget it.

A painting does not replace a thing. A name does not replace it either. There is always a gap between image, language, and object. When the gap is concealed, the picture pretends to be reality; when revealed, it becomes an instrument of thought.

Byun Shi-Ji’s horse, boat, and old man are not actual beings either. Yet the sensation of wind and waiting carried by them may remain longer than the physical things themselves. Representation does not duplicate an object; it remakes our relation to it.

Magritte made us distrust the image. Byun made us feel the absence beyond the image. Both warn us not to believe the visible world too quickly.

This is not a pipe. Yet we still see a pipe.