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Rene Magritte Treachery of Images

Recent research by Tim Airgeeten, an art historian from the University of Toronto, suggests that Belgian surrealist René Magritte’s iconic painting, “The Treachery of Images,” may be an encoded condemnation of his least favorite cigar company. The painting, fashioned in the style of a tobacco store advertisement, pictures a brown pipe floating above the phrase “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”). The work is traditionally interpreted as a commentary on the imitative nature of art — the wooden pipe in the painting is, of course, a representation of a pipe rather than the physical pipe itself. But a document recently unearthed by Airgeeten suggests that the image might have held additional, more personal significance for the artist, an avid pipe-smoker. The scholar uncovered a letter Magritte wrote in 1927 — a year before he began working on “The Treachery of Images”— to the president of Alterdis, a French tobacco company. In it, the artist complains about the company’s “lousy excuse for a pipe, which burns out in short order and hardly conducts any smoke at all.” Upon further investigation, Airgeeten discovered that Alterdis’s advertisements from 1927 contain a tan background and graphic pipe design strikingly similar to those in “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Magritte’s painting, then, may be a philosophical statement about the nature of painting (and language, as Structuralists believe) — but it could also be an unhappy customer’s way of getting back at Altertis for a disappointing product, and a joke at the company’s expense.

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