And this is not a comic
Magritte titled the piece below ‘The Treachery of Images’. He wasn’t wrong.
Images will quite happily stab you in the back, they will slander and smear you to get ahead… what’s more you can’t even trust them with your children.
Images are treacherous things indeed.
Sometimes you get warning, like on the news where they tell you that they may be disturbing or when someone sends you a link containing the now ubiquitous acronym, NSFW…
Anyway, your mission, should you accept it, is to find a picture and slogan it to make it safe in the same way as I have done, by taking Magritte’s lead:
‘This is not an x’
If you fancy doing such a thing, don’t forget that GIMP is a free image editing tool, but failing that you can always link to the image with the phrase in the comments too.
I don’t quite understand your comment on this one, Ad, but the comic made me laugh. Mainly because drills always make me think of the new intruder alarm at school…destined to fail.
I hope I’m not spoiling Adam’s slight air of mystery, but the point is that the pipe is not a pipe and the drill is not a drill. They are images of those things, not the object themselves. But because we tend to be lazy in speaking, we’ve come to think of “real drill” and “picture of a drill’ as being synonymous when they’re not. We give images a great deal of power that way, by treating them as if they were “real” objects rather than representations of real objects.
Oh, I get it! Thank you for the explanation.
I would do a picture of my T-rex with maracas that says “This is not a T-rex with maracas” but I don’t know how to post photos.
Also, a demonstration of just how powerful the advertising industry is-everytime I look at the phrase “This is not an x” I think “This is an Marks and Spencers’ x” >.<
You kow what, Maddie, that’s exactly what i thought when writing it… except I wasn’t sure how many people would get the M&S reference.
If you want to post a picture here, you can either put a link to where it is in the comment and I’ll sort it out, or you can email me with it.
Ha, A T-Rex with maracas… they have such tiny arms.
I’ll email you it. You’re gonna love my little T-rex
That’s fantastic!
Wow! I want one!
Super-cute!
Chyeah, I spend my time making tiny maracas and attaching them to T-rexs.
The aim is to make a whole band…I’m going to need more dinosaurs..
How very Semiotics of you.
Signifier: Signified!
Arbitrariness!
sitting pugss last post..Off to the glitz, the glare, and the 2009 Atlanta Film Festival
in real life, he IS a dog. a very sweet one, at that
Aw, that’s not a dog… it’s a cute dog.
Does he have a name?
his name is rocky! he’s a pitbull mix we took in from the streets. you wouldn’t think of a pitbull being a good cuddler but this one definitely is.
I resent this line: “Magritte titled the piece below ‘The Treachery of Images’.”
Considering ther subject matter and the topic, you should have known that at least one pedant would point out that Magritte actually titled this piece “La trahison des images”. It would have been translated by other people. Sorry.
Ah, pedant mode… It’s OK though, you are perfectly correct. Magritte was Belgian, as the writing in the picture can atest. And as such the title too would be in Belgian.
However, I’m pretty sure I don’t have too many Belgian readers (which is a shame, if you ask me).
I’ll retalliate with a small amount of pedantry of my own though – “Considering ther subject matter”
You have an extra ‘r’ there.
Since we’re being pedantic, I’ll point out that Belgian is not a language. They speak Dutch (the Belgian dialect of which is called Flemish) in the North and French in the South. The caption on Magritte’s painting is in French.
You are, of course, completely correct.
Emma wins the pedant pendant!
Thank you, I’m honored. I’d like to thank… well, the Belgians, I guess.
Additional: The Red Dwarf reference just had to be dug out.
Watch from 40 seconds in until 1 minute (or watch the whole thing, it’s still good).
Ha. Good call!
Just out of interest, did any of you manage to catch the three new episodes of Red Dwarf that were on over the Easter holiday?
This is not a comment.
/b
Topic of discussion: Was I telling the truth when I made this one?
Erika Hammerschmidts last post..Abby and Norma #422
Oh yeah. It’s clearly a poem.
Brandys last post..Tea Hee
That is probably actually an acurate statement.
He is probably union, and look at his clothes, that is the first cement he has touched all day.
Also, the clincher, that wall was laid hours, if not, a day ago.
Bens last post..Hanging Fuschia
You mean he’s… faking it?
I’d say so.
Bens last post..This is not Graffitti
This is not funny.
Bens last post..Hanging Fuschia
Oh, man! Ok, I really have to show you my comic book show.
I didn’t really get the comic at first – but when you referenced Magritte’s image in the post: that’s when it all suddenly hit me, heh heh.
This strip is freakin’ genius! Well done, sir!
The Telegraph wins:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/signlanguage/5163976/Sign-language-week-44.html
/b
Ooooh, that’s bloody awesome.
The fact is, it might not acutally be a door! hehe! The picture (all of them actually) reminds me of Walter Benjamins reproduction of mechanical art (not to go all academic!)!
This is not a sign
I know I’m late to the party. I been buseh changin nappeez
http://www.lukesurl.com/archives/628
franzys last post..And Marconi dreamed on …
Here’s one I saw in Spain. It’s a door that says “Salida” — meaning “exit”– but it’s clearly not an exit, seeing as how it’s nailed shut multiple times.
http://www.erikahammerschmidt.com/erika/travel/nonexit.htm
Erika Hammerschmidts last post..Abby and Norma #428
This is a brilliant discussion – may I link to this page for my Art History class?
This series — Ceci n’est pas — always makes me wonder if Magritte studied Kant (das Ding an sich) at all.
Oh, he did. Most artists of an intellectual leaning, at some point, end up reading Kant.
“Humans can make sense out of phenomena in various ways, but can never directly know the noumena, the ‘things-in-themselves,’ the actual objects and dynamics of the natural world. In other words, our minds may attempt to correlate in useful ways, perhaps even closely accurate ways (such as through a painting), with the structure and order of the various aspects of the universe, but cannot know these “things-in-themselves”(noumena) directly.”
sorry for being that late with a comment,
but the thing on the picture, even if it isn’t “not a drill”,
then it is at least some quite unusual drill.
i mean the unconventional direction of the thread on it.