The mystical, Platonic identification of words with the essence of things is what many of Magritte’s canvases vigorously assault. Just as in Saussurean linguistics words do not “refer” to things, in Magritte’s Surrealism the painter’s images do not really “resemble” anything whose sovereign presence would lend it the aspect of a model or origin. When we say one thing resembles another, after all, we imply that the latter is somehow ontologically superior to, more “real” than the former–the copy predicates its existence (qua copy) upon whatever it submissively imitates. Major schools of traditional Western thought were unable definitively to separate language from its objects. Similarly, classical painting–using techniques ranging from perspective to trompe-l’oeil–attempted to identify scenes or images with the “models” that inspired them. As Foucault notes, however, such a theory of representation reintroduced discursive affirmation into a space from which it had supposedly been ejected. Into the painting, in theory an exclusively visual production, there creeps a secret, inescapably linguistic element: “This painted image is that thing.”

Above quote is an excerpt from the translators (James Harkness) introduction of This is Not A Pipe by Michel Foucault.

Painting: Ceci n’est pas une pipe (1926) Rene Magritte

Tags:FoucaultlinguisticsMagrittepot-modernismSurrealism