René Magritte, La Trahison Des Images (The Treachery of Images), 2003, Etching & Paper

Description

René Magritte (1898 - 1967)

"La Trahison des Images" (The Treachery of Images)

Original Etching on "Velin de Rives"

Invented … more René Magritte (1898 - 1967)

"La Trahison des Images" (The Treachery of Images)

Original Etching on "Velin de Rives"

Invented in 1952
Printed in 2003

Sheet size: 280 x 210 mm
Image size: 88 x 132 mm

Plate signed and dated lower left
Hand-Numbered 204/950 lower left

Official edition, with blind stamp by "Succession Magritte" (the Magritte Estate)

Excellent condition
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This is an original etching by Belgian surrealist artist René Magritte, printed in 2003 in a numbered edition of 950 only under the supervision of the Succession Magritte (the Estate of Magritte).

The Estate chose three images only for representing the work and the poetic of the artist, this one being the most surrealist and absurd - during his lifetime, he painted and draw several version of this subject.
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The Meaning of the Artwork.

"The Treachery of Images" cleverly highlights the gap between language and meaning. Magritte combined the words and image in such a fashion that he forces us to question the importance of the sentence and the word. “Pipe,” for instance, is no more an actual pipe than a picture of a pipe can be smoked. Magritte likely borrowed the pipe motif from Le Corbusier’s book "Vers une architecture" (1923), since he was admirer of the architect and painter.

Magritte’s idea is that there is not supposed to be a direct link between the image and what it represents. His "This is not a pipe" title below an image of a pipe, that the entire exhibition is named after, is saying that very clearly. It is an image of a pipe, not a pipe we can light up and smoke; not even an idea of a pipe in a platonic sense of the term. Just one of many images that by themselves have no meaning and are emptied out of any context, apart from the one we read into it. By doing that, Magritte opened himself an entire world of empty images he can use as he see fits, always fully aware of the fluidity (and ultimately, the emptiness) of their symbolic content and their signification. In the end, there is nothing behind a symbol, as it is nothing but an empty husk we read into. As anyone else in his time, Magritte was deeply influenced (you could say troubled) by the teachings of Freud. His idea was that the symbols always point towards our deepest fears, our repressed desires, and that it is subconsciousness’ and id’s subversive manner of finding their way into our controlled and civilised everyday life through symbols. Magritte ran with this notion for a while until he developed towards an idea that we already presented, that meaning as such does not really exist. This piece has an attribution mark,
I am sure that it is completely authentic and take full responsibility for any authenticity
issues arising from misattribution less