- Paperback: 112 pages
- Publisher: University of California Press; New edition edition (1 July 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0520049160
- ISBN-13: 978-0520049161
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.2 x 0.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 514,278 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? Rene Magritte's famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by the French philosopher-historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction - "confronting them and within a common system, a figure at once opposed and complementary." Foucault's brief but extraordinarily rich essay offers a startling, highly provocative view of a painter whose influence and popularity continue to grow unchecked. "This is Not a Pipe" also throws a new, piquantly dancing light on Foucault himself.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have used this book for a comparison of Magritte and Baldessari and it has served me extremely well. Not only is it a fascinating read but also a great introduction into Foucaultian theory which is - if you read "The Order of Things" for example - usually written in the best obscurantist's tradition.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Great quick introduction to Foucault
9 July 2000
Format:Paperback
No, Foucault is never easy. He sometimes even writes in Foucault-ese. But the intellectual payoffs are well worth it. Seeing him approach a single painting -- which you can look at while reading the book -- is much less taxing than seeing him dissect huge topics such as the history of prisons or the history of sex. Sure, those bigger Foucault tomes carry immense rewards all their own... but for a good, stimulating, and challenging (but not TOO challenging!) introduction to Foucault's philosophy of seeing and of naming, this is a great read.
Perhaps this book is a better choice for philosophy or lit-crit fams than art / art history fans. The "artistic" value of the painting is really of not much importance to Foucault; he is more concerned with its self-referentiality, its use of meaning and names, and so on.
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Language is a Prison
26 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
I read this in college while studying semiotics and surrealism, yet the message of Foucault should not be relegated to the exotic and extreme "isms" of academia. I found "Pipe" to be a marvelous and playful illustration of the tryanny of language and the Orwellian control of thought which follows. Readers of Postmodern thought, Zen, Marxism, Film Theory, Psychoanlysis, and Modern Art will find moments of illumination throughout.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Art theory + semiotics + Foucault = you will like it!
5 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback
I really enjoyed the book. It is art theory, semiotics and Foucault in the same plate. Based on the analysis of Margitte's "This is not a pipe", he argues that modern art became autonomous from the language that lied buried in representational realism. While Klee and Kandinsky used abstraction to destroy syntax of the traditional (XV-XIX c.) visual art, Margitte used literalism to undermine itself.
It is not an easy reading but since you have picked the book (for whatever reason you did so), I believe you will enjoy it. Take your time, don't swallow it all at once, consume the words along with the images in the back of the book and I bet you won't regret it.
My favorite quote: "A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell."
It is not an easy reading but since you have picked the book (for whatever reason you did so), I believe you will enjoy it. Take your time, don't swallow it all at once, consume the words along with the images in the back of the book and I bet you won't regret it.
My favorite quote: "A day will come when, by means of similitude relayed indefinitely along the length of a series, the image itself, along with the name it bears, will lose its identity. Campbell, Campbell, Campbell, Campbell."
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