THE TREACHERY OF IMAGES

'''The Treachery Of Images''' ('''La trahison des images''' 1928-29) is a painting by Belgian Surrealist painter René Magritte, famous for its inscription 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' () or ''this is not a pipe''. It is currently housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California and was previously housed at the Art Institute of Chicago.
The picture shows a pipe that looks as though it might come from a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe: '''"Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe)''', which seems a contradiction but is actually true. The painting is not a pipe, but rather an ''image'' of a pipe. As Magritte himself commented: "''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.''"
Magritte extends the style and effect in his 1930 painting, The Key of Dreams.

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In popular culture

See also

In popular culture

★ French literary critic and philosopher Michel Foucault discusses the painting and its paradox in his 1973 book, ''This is not a Pipe'' (English edition, 1991).

★ In Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, the painting is used as an introduction of sorts to the 2nd chapter, but with the concept taken to the extreme, with McCloud pointing out that not only is the version that appears in his book not a pipe, it is not even a painting of a pipe but several printed copies of a drawing of a painting of a pipe.

★ Douglas Hofstadter also discusses this painting and other images like it in his book ''Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'', a treatise on formal systems and intelligence.

★ In '', Captain Jack Sparrow insists that his piece of cloth portrays not a key, but a ''drawing'' of a key.

★ The painting is referenced several times in the online MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing.

★ The video game Rayman Raving Rabbids has version of the painting in its main room with a caption "Ceci n'est pas une Carotte".

See also

★ Map-territory relation

★ Self-reference