"This Is Not a Pipe" Parodies
Added 7 years ago by Adam • Updated 5 months ago by Autumn Able
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About • Origin • Spread • Various Examples • Search Interest • External References • |
Type: Parody
Tags: art parodies
About
"This Is Not a Pipe" Parodies are a series of images parodying René Magritte's La trahison des images ("The Treachery of Images"), a famous painting in which Magritte drew an image of a tobacco pipe and captioned it "Ceci n'est pas une pipe," which translates to "This is Not a Pipe."
Origin
In 1928, Magritte began working on "The Treachery of Images."[1] The painting became famous for its meta message, making the viewer aware that what it is seeing depicted in art is merely a representation of the thing itself. In a Magritte biography by Harry Torczyner, Magritte is quoted as saying:
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!
Spread
The famousness of the painting and its relevance to visual art made it ripe for parody in the following decades. TV Tropes[2] hosts a collection of variations on the image's text in popular TV, Film, and Web media. For example, to demonstrate the trope, they present a picture of a single-frame comic drawn by Dan Piraro in 1997 (shown below).
Magritte's painting became a popular reference with the dawn of internet memes, appearing in early memes such Advice Animals and Rage Comics in the late 2000s (examples shown below).
The painting proved adaptable to many meme templates over the coming years. In 2014, Pipesmagazine forum poster misterlowercase[3] posted a large compilation of various "This Is Not a Pipe" variations. The phrase has also been adapted to memes including Pepe, Bitch I Might Be, and Actually it's about ethics in gaming journalism (shown below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Wikipedia – The Treachery of Images
[2] TV Tropes – The Treachery of Images
[3] Pipesmagazine – The Treachery of Images
Comments ( 9 )
Well what did you expect from the artist who's self portrait had an apple over his face.
You don't understand art!
This one's been my favorite for quite a while.
The Treachery of Images by jollyjack on DeviantArt
And here's the obligatory edit featuring meme man:
You don't understand art!
How tf is it not a pipe?
its an image of a pipe it was ment to show something about how the human mind works or something.
It's not a pipe, it's just a picture of a pipe.
And it's not even the real painting, it is only a digital file which serves to make computer moniters to create coloured lights which when combined can be interpreted has an image, which itself, is a virtual redistribution of a famous surrealist painting which dipicts a visual representation of our understanding of what a smoking pipe is.
And it's not even the real painting, it is only a digital file which serves to make computer moniters to create coloured lights which when combined can be interpreted has an image, which itself, is a virtual redistribution of a famous surrealist painting which dipicts a visual representation of our understanding of what a smoking pipe is.
its an image of a pipe it was ment to show something about how the human mind works or something.
It's not a pipe, it's just a picture of a pipe.
And it's not even the real painting, it is only a digital file which serves to make computer moniters to create coloured lights which when combined can be interpreted has an image, which itself, is a virtual redistribution of a famous surrealist painting which dipicts a visual representation of our understanding of what a smoking pipe is.
And it's not even the real painting, it is only a digital file which serves to make computer moniters to create coloured lights which when combined can be interpreted has an image, which itself, is a virtual redistribution of a famous surrealist painting which dipicts a visual representation of our understanding of what a smoking pipe is.
I'm all for literal surrealist memes to arise.
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