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 (French: La trahison des images [la tʁaizɔ̃ dez imaʒ], 1928–29, sometimes translated as The Treason of Images) is a painting by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte.

The picture shows a pipe. Below it, Magritte painted, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe.", 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!^[2]

Magritte painted The Treachery of Images when he was 30 years old. It is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.^[3] His statement is taken to mean that the painting itself is not a pipe. The painting is merely an image of a pipe. Hence, the description, "this is not a pipe." The theme of pipes with the text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" is extended in his 1966 painting, Les Deux Mystères.^[4]

The painting is sometimes given as an example of meta message conveyed by paralanguage.^[5] Compare with Korzybski's "The word is not the thing" and "The map is not the territory".

External video

Magritte's The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe), Smarthistory[6]

René Magritte considers language and perception, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art[7]

• Representative realism
• Self-reference
• Simulacra and Simulation
• Subtext
• Theory of Forms

• Allmer, Patricia. René Magritte: Beyond Painting, Manchester University Press, 2009. ISBN 0-7190-7928-4.
• Foucault, Michel (1983). This is not a pipe. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520049160. 

Wikiversity has learning materials about Literature/1929/Magritte#Parody

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