Description
René Magritte first conceived this famous image in oil on canvas in 1929, when he was most interested in the relationship between words and pictures. In this work from 1964, Magritte revisited the image, in gouache. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe) articulates that the reproduction of the pipe is not the pipe itself, nor is the word “pipe” an actual pipe, the implement to smoke tobacco. Magritte retitled this version The Tune and Also the Words (L’Air et la Chanson) because, as he put it, “it is desirable that such a thing is found in as many ‘households’ as possible.”
Provenance
Alexander Iolas Gallery, Paris, by 1964; sold to the Hanover Gallery, London, by 1969. Sold by E. Hammer Gallery, Paris, to the Pace Gallery, New York, Oct. 1973 [Kanoi Keith of the Pace Gallery, New York, in a phone conversation of August 24, 1995]; sold, Museum of Contemporary Art Third Benefit Auction, Chicago, Nov. 15, 1975, lot 43, to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018.
Accession Number
119129
Medium
Gouache over traces of graphite on cream wove paper
Dimensions
36.2 × 54.8 cm (14 5/16 × 21 5/8 in.)
Classification
gouache
Credit Line
Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
Background & Context
Background Story
Rene Magrittes The Tune and Also the Words from 1964 is a gouache over graphite on cream wove paper that exemplifies the Belgian Surrealist painters approach to the relationship between images and language, a subject that occupied him throughout his career and that produced some of his most celebrated and influential works. The title, which distinguishes between the tune (the visual image) and the words (the linguistic label), directly addresses the central problem of Magrittes art: the irreducible gap between what we see and what we say, between the visual experience of an image and the linguistic description that purports to identify it. Magritte, who had explored this problem in his famous painting The Treachery of Images (This is not a pipe) of 1929, returned to it throughout his career in works that demonstrate the impossibility of closing the gap between visual and linguistic representation. The gouache medium, with its capacity for flat, opaque areas of color and precise Linear definition, allows Magritte to create the illusionistic images that are the vehicle for his philosophical investigations, producing the same combination of visual realism and conceptual provocation that characterizes his oil paintings in a medium that is both more intimate and more immediate. The year 1964 places this work in the final decade of Magrittes career, when he was producing some of his most accomplished gouaches and continuing to refine the philosophical investigations that had occupied him since the 1920s.
Cultural Impact
Magrittes gouaches are significant contributions to the history of Surrealist art and the broader tradition of conceptual art that addresses the relationship between images and language. The Tune and Also the Words influenced the development of conceptual art and the broader tradition of art that investigates the gap between visual and linguistic representation.
Why It Matters
A 1964 gouache by Magritte over graphite on cream wove paper addressing the relationship between visual images and linguistic labels, investigating the irreducible gap between what we see and what we say that was the central philosophical problem of his art.
