rene margritte

Magritte’s the treachery o f images (1928-9) shows an illustrated styled painting of a brown wooden tobacco pipe; a commonly used utensil by Magritte and the society at the time. This familiar object became something culturally recognizable, taken away from any narrative context then becomes nothing other than symbolic. A representation that presents itself to be a physical pipe as Magritte commented “The famous pipe…? I’ve been reproached enough about it! And yet… can you fill it? No, it’s only a depiction isn’t it”1. In this section of his comment, he states that his pipe is nothing but a depiction of an object, in other words has no intention of existing in our world as a pipe. In continuation of his comment he says “So if I had written ‘this is a pipe’ under my picture, I would have been lying!” Ceci n’est pas une pipe or translated ‘This is not a pipe’ was steadily written underneath the image. The sense of contradiction has a rightful role to be present, but that sense could only exist between two statements or within one in the same statement. Here there is clearly but one2. Nevertheless, viewed overall as a sign because it produces meaning, this dualistic model can be linked to Saussure’s semiotic theory.
Unquestionably, our knowledge of language and how we relate text between images is how we as human keep at a particular relationship with the world. Language is a system of representation; it functions in our world as a system of classification that helps us to understand the world we live in and also one another. According to Erwin Panofsky, Fernando de Saussure who was considered the founder of linguistics “defined the human as a language maker”3, this then lead Saussure accompanied alongside Charles S .Pierce to bring to life the system of semiotics or semiology.”Semiotic theory…focuses on communication as a social process” (Chaplin, E.)4. This distinction was made by the relationship between the signifier (word) and signified