René Magritte
Belgian, 1898-1967
The Tune and Also the Words
INV-1191
René Magritte
Belgian, 1898-19671964
The Tune and Also the Words
René Magritte Belgian, 1898-1967 →gouachedrawings (visual works)
Date
1964
Medium
Gouache over traces of graphite on cream wove paper
Dimensions
36.2 × 54.8 cm (14 5/16 × 21 5/8 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
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.”
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