the miracle of french pipes

14 Mar, 2024

for the past couple of years i've been incredibly transfixed by all the things rené magritte's 1929 painting the treachery of images manages to make me question just by fucking existing; but i've never put any of these thoughts out into the open because, like, when and where? it's less a fun conversation topic and more a spiral of awe and delight that makes me feel crazy and fucked up and glad to be alive and exactly the thing a blogpost is good for so. i mean. here we go.¹

to start off, the only thing you need to know is that ceci n'est pas une pipe is french for this is not a pipe. we'll cut to the painter himself for the rest of the basic rundown:

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!

— René Magritte

it's not particularly hard to understand, but what really gets me is that the treachery is only really revealed through the very thing magritte pokes fun at. he basically cautions us about conflating an object with its image; but the same thing should apply to the text below it. the word 'pipe' isn't an actual pipe either, but merely a representation of it. does that make the whole piece a double negative? what right does a representation have to undermine another's authenticity?

(cue: coyote meets road runner. it is at this point the canvas goes KABOOM.)²

an attempt at a reasonable and valuable line of questioning: in a truly objective world, words and images are separate from their actual meaning— so what's the point of making art? of taking a thing and diluting it for other people's consumption so that it's the same but slightly off-kilter, merely an abstract-impressionist approximate of the proverbial real deal?³

the best answer staring at a ceiling fan whirl can get you: well, the miracle of french pipes is that we don't live in a truly objective world. we accept and trust that other people will leap through rings of fire and prickly hurdles to grasp at our own humble straws. in fact, we're assured of it. we buy into the treachery ourselves. where there isn't meaning before, we fill in the gaps accordingly.

see: mom leaves her dishes unwashed for once, so you massage her temples before she has to get up for work. a friend asks if you're busy so you make time you don't have for a call to check-in. you come across a painting of a pipe and you hate the thought of smoke but the veil lifts anyway. the illusion reveals its comedy.

and i get you might be thinking— well, we all know this. cavemen knew this because why else would they carve pictures on the wall for us to dig up centuries later? it's the definition of fundamental. what the hell makes magritte so special?

nothing! nothing, save for the fact he exposes the glamour. magic tends to lose its shine when you live and breathe it, you know? like, i knew we lived in a reality where wanting to make sense of each other was the default setting. we were always born to grasp at meaning. i just didn't appreciate that for what it was before.

i imagine him sitting in a parisian café nearly a hundred years into the past giggling about this stupid painting he's sitting on, having no idea how hard it's gonna body-slam a twenty-three year old living out in the tropics with a lightness only previously observed in white women who have seen eat, pray, love. i laugh often about this— it's a great thought for when i'm feeling down.

004: nearly talked myself out of posting this entry but i realized that if you can't gleam the sort of fool i am from it next to nothing will make it as clear! goofy art appreciation