Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe)

0:00(jazzy music) Voiceover: The Museum of Art, in LACMA, and we're looking at Magritte's The Treachery of Images from 1929 or also called N'est pas une pipe, this is not a pipe.

0:17Voiceover: It's a hilarious painting. Voiceover: (chuckles) It is hilarious! It's an incredibly real painting of a pipe.

0:23Voiceover: Magritte paints in this incredibly wonderful matter-of-fact, absolutely mundane, illustrative style.

0:31Voiceover: Yes, like he was illustrating a catalog.

0:34Voiceover: And with the words underneath, it's as if you're looking at one of the flashcards you would have as a child where it would say

0:40Voiceover: That would say "pipe" but it says, "This is not a pipe"!

0:42Voiceover: That's right. And, of course, he's right, it's not a pipe. It's a painting of a pipe.

0:48Voiceover: But it is a pipe. Voiceover: Where is the authority? Do we believe what we're seeing in the veracity of the illustration, the sort of perfect representation of the almost platonic pipe?

1:00Voiceover: It's the "or" pipe. Voiceover: It's the "or" pipe, exactly. Or, do we believe the text underneath, which tells us it's not a pipe? Which is stronger, the representation of the thing or the language that denies it?

1:13Voiceover: For me? Voiceover: Yeah, for you.

1:15Voiceover: The picture of the pipe. Voiceover: The picture of the pipe is more powerful than the language? Voiceover. Yes.

1:20Voiceover: That's so interesting because I think for most ... Maybe that's because you're an art historian.

1:24Voiceover: Maybe that's why I became an art historian!

1:27Voiceover: (chuckles) Maybe so! Voiceover: I believe whatever I see.

1:28Voiceover: Because so many people believe what they read and in a sense I think the language has a kind of authority. For me, there's this sort of perfect almost balance and struggle between the two where I just absolutely accept that pipe. It's there. It's this pipe.

1:42It's this perfect representation of a pipe. The language is completely denying it and has tremendous authority as well. It's this fantastic tension between that presentation and then that rejection of the presentation.

1:55Voiceover: Then of course there's the word "pipe" which is in a way just as much an abstraction from the actual item of the pipe.

2:03Voiceover: Ah, okay. So the representation of the pipe is two-fold. There's the representation of the pipe

2:10Voiceover: As an image. Voiceover: As an image that's iconic.

2:13Voiceover: And then there's the word. Voiceover: This linguistic symbol.

2:15Voiceover: Yeah. Voiceover: And they're both not a pipe.

2:18Voiceover: They're both not a pipe! (chuckles)

2:19Voiceover: That's right. They're both actually ways of representing a pipe or our notion of what that pipe is in somebody's mouth somewhere.

2:26Voiceover: What else could this be a picture of? It is a pipe!

2:32Voiceover: So you're denying the text. They're both in the painting.

2:37Voiceover: Okay, so when Magritte paints this he's clearly challenging this notion of authority and which and what and it's really playful.

2:44Voiceover: And also it's challenging the whole illusionistic history of Western art, right?

2:48Voiceover: No question about it. And he's doing it again with a kind of faux naturalism, right, with this kind of self-conscious naturalism which really sort of transcends naturalism in its sort of self reference.

3:00Voiceover: Perfectly painted and model of a pipe.

3:03Voiceover: But also perfectly written text. Because the script is again the kind of didactic script that you would find in a kindergarten classroom, which is really meant to be instructive and meant to be full of authority. So this is a painting really about the denial of authorities of language and representation, isn't it?

3:20Voiceover: I guess so. I remember when my daughter was really little and I woke up every morning and she looked at books with pictures just like this one, then pointed and I had to give her the names for things.

3:31Voiceover: You could have really screwed her up by giving her a book which said, "This is not a pipe"! (laughs) (jazzy music)