Ceci n'est pas un pipe

Looks like we're in for a bit of rain the next few days, so I think this weekend I'll pop up to the Seoul Museum of Art - they've got a René Magritte exhibit on through April. Belgian surrealism seems the perfect way to while away a dreary day.

The picture here is one of Magritte's more famous paintings, The Son of Man (1964). A self-portrait with his face obscured by an apple, Magritte had this to say about it:

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well....

Unfortunately, the piece is privately owned so won't be on display. But the painting I allude to in the post title, La trahison des images (1928-1929) should be - it's owned by the LACMA, so hopefully part of the show. It's a painting of a pipe, looking like something one might find on a tobacco ad of the period (Magritte actually co-founded a Belgian ad agency with his brother after his first Paris show was a failure), with the caption "Ceci n'est pas un pipe." written underneath. He's right, of course, despite the apparent contradiction - it isn't a pipe, but merely an image of a pipe. No matter how perfectly we capture the image of a thing, we never capture the thing itself. As Magritte said, "Just try to stuff it with tobacco! If I were to have had written on my picture 'This is a pipe' I would have been lying."