Wednesday, 18 May 2011

This is not a pipe


Foucault makes the comparison of the drawing of the pipe to an actual pipe. There is confusion about the pipe being depicted in the painting, but we must understand that it is not a real pipe since you cannot smoke it. So it is just a drawing of a pipe. Then you have the written text that could just be a drawing of the words this is not a pipe. If we believe that these words are no more than a drawing then we must not read the sentence as conflicting what is pictured above it. But we must try to understand the meaning of this drawing of text. With these two things understood, it opens up a discourse of the meaning of the entire painting.
Because of the similarities that these elements bring into the equation, we can begin to derive many different meanings from this painting. It is misleading to try to connect the image to the text because for one thing, you do not know what “This” refers to when you read the text, “This is not a pipe”. This theory refers to an ellipsis. You are missing a key word to let you know what is being referred to in the statement. Foucault makes mention that Margritte has constructed a calligram.Whereas the content has been inverted. The drawing of the pipe acts as a title and the words themselves are self-referential. So when it says, “ This is not a pipe”, it is correct because the words are not a pipe.

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