The Pipe that Started a Revolution
There is a picture hanging in the Chicago Institute of Art by Rene Magritte called La Trahison des Images which is French for The Treason of Images. This painting is from the late Nineteenth Century (The late 1800's)
It looks kinda like this but painted much better and the words “This is not a pipe” are in French.
You can see it here; just use your browser’s back key to return after you’ve looked at it. http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?aid=999354&item=378396
La Trahison des Images is one of the most famous paintings in the world,
but why?
One of the essential tools of art has been to use one thing to mean another. This is the essence of symbolism, and the shorthand that allows art to convey a vast amount of meaning on the small canvas (The warmly lit homes in the paintings of Thomas Kincaid are intended as symbols portraying feelings of security and family; for example). Of course the other aspect of art is to request that we suspend belief in what we see and accept something to be what it cannot possible be, i.e. that bright colored paint on a white surface is in fact what we have been trained to see in it; a boat on the sea, people at a picnic, dogs playing poker or whatever. In a way, symbolism has been the “point” of art for a very long time. The amount of symbolism used in art is so vast; clothes that express power and wealth, the heroic postures of soldiers and workers, flowers and plants signifying rebirth.
Rene Magritte began a revolution with “The Treason of Images” by simply saying “Hey guys, hold up, this is not a pipe, its just colored paint on a canvas”.
This revolution was both in art and philosophy. In Existentialism, things are said to mean only themselves. This idea that something cannot stand for something else, in others words we cannot use symbols because the object that is supposed to be a symbol for something else has it’s own meaning and it’s own significance. The Existentialist felt the using something to mean something else was to dishonor the object being used. That every object, every person was unique and important in and for themselves.
This is difficult for me; I hope that you can understand this better than I can.
Beginning with a painting that declared that it was not what it was a representation of (this is not a pipe but only a picture of a pipe), i.e.it was only a representation. Some artists began to claim that the representation itself was the only thing that was important, that because each and every object was important for and in themselves, some artists created movements in the modern art from this realization.
Now when you go into a museum of modern art there can be displays of, perhaps - to use an example, jars of pigments. These jars of pigments are meant to be seen and enjoyed for themselves. Color and shape as color and shape, not as representation of a “Walk in the park”, "Love" or "The Dignity of the Worker"or anything else, just jars of pigment.
Jars of pigment with shape, color and substance. Jars of pigment we can simply enjoy for themselves without looking beyond them for a deeper meaning
This is why Rene Magritte’s painting The Treason of Images is one of the world’s most important paintings. The Treason of Images made many people stop thinking about art in the usual way, as ways of representing deeper meaning and made them think about art in a revolutionary new way as a means to frame reality and enjoy the simple fact of existence in each thing.
