The Treachery of Images

One of the most iconic paintings of the 20th century was created by the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte when he was aged 30 years. Titled The Treachery of Images (1928), it features a profile of a pipe, below which is written, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” French for “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s work symbolizes a number of important truths that professionals who deal regularly with images, and especially radiologists, would do well to ponder.

Magritte was born in 1898 and began drawing lessons when he was aged 12 years. His mother had a history of mental illness that prompted Magritte’s father to keep her locked in her bedroom, and she ultimately committed suicide by drowning herself in the local river. Magritte studied art in Brussels, served in the military, and produced his first surrealist painting in 1926, a milestone that went largely unnoticed .

Magritte worked off and on in advertising, and at one point during World War II, supported himself by forging the works of other artists, such as Picasso. After the war, he also spent some time producing counterfeit bank notes to support himself. His surrealist paintings began to attain widespread recognition during the 1960s, the same decade in which he developed pancreatic cancer. He died at the age of 68 years and is buried in Brussels .

Magritte was frequently reproached for The Treachery of Images . Viewers complained that the image plainly was a pipe–as obvious an image of a pipe as a person could possibly imagine. Yet the caption explicitly denies this. Magritte’s response was amusement. “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? From Magritte’s point of view, the painting was just that–a painting -and to claim that he had created a pipe would have been a lie.

By entitling the painting as he does, Magritte reminds us that images–all images, whether abstract works of art, photographic portraits, or radiographs–merely represent and do not reproduce the reality they attempt to portray. In every case, what we have is not X–the thing depicted–but an image of X. Likewise, when a radiologist looks at a computed tomography (CT) image of a heart or a magnetic resonance (MR) image of a knee, what meets the eye is a representation, and never the organ or tissue itself.

This distinction is worth drawing for many reasons. For one, by including some features of reality, every image also necessarily excludes others. When we produce a chest radiograph, we choose to exclude most of the abdomen, and when we put the MR coil around the knee, we thereby choose to ignore the ankle. We cannot see everything, so we must choose to see only some things, and this means accepting the exclusion of others.

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References

1. Sylvester D.: Magritte. Rev. and enl ed.2009.MercatorfondsBrussels
2. Arnason H.H.: History of modern art.2nd ed1997.Harry N Abrams, IncNew York
3. Southgate T.M.: Rene Magritte: the telescope.Southgate T.M.The art of JAMA III: covers and essays from the Journal of the American Medical Association.2011.Oxford University PressNew York:pp. 180-181.
4. Smoke and mirrors: the surreal life and work of Rene Magritte. The Independent [Internet]. 2011 June 10 [cited 2015 May 26]. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/smoke-and-mirrors-the-surreal-life-and-work-of-ren-magritte-2295262.html . Accessed June 15, 2015.

The Treachery of Images

References

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