Magritte: Words And Images

“In Les Mots et Les Images, René Magritte notes that ‘everything tends to make us think that there is very little connection between an object and what represents it’ and that ‘an object never fulfills the same function’. Influenced by the Surrealist movement that was emerging from Paris, René Magritte’s surreal art began to play with the notion of language, representation and art. Most infamous is his painting of a pipe with the caption ‘This is not a pipe’. The painting emphasizes that a picture of a pipe and the real object are not the same thing thus undoing a more traditional, mimetic motivation in art.”

• An object is not so possessed of its name that one cannot find for it another which suits it better.
• There are objects which do without a name.
• A word sometimes only serves to designate itself.
• An object encounters its image, an object encounters its name.  It happens that the image and the name of that object encounter each other.
• Sometimes the name of an object takes the place of an image.
• A word can take the place of an object in reality.
• An image can take the place of a word in a proposition.
• An object can imply that there are other objects behind it.
• Everything tends to make one think that there is little relation between an object and that which represents it.
• The words which serve to designate two different objects do not show what may distinguish those objects from one another.
• In a painting, the words are of the same substance as the images.
• The words which serve to designate two different objects do not show what may distinguish those objects from one another.
• In a painting, the words are of the same substance as the images.
• One sees differently the images and the words in a painting.
• Any shape whatever may replace the image of an object.
• An object never performs the same function as its name or its image.
• The visible contours of objects in reality touch each other as if they formed a mosaic.
•  Vague figures have a meaning as necessary and as perfect as precise ones.
• Sometimes, the names written in a painting designate precise things, and images vague things.

Or, the contrary