Interesting how in trying to produce paintings devoid of style, Magritte inadvertently established one of the most iconic and memorable painting aesthetics. Great video.
Hmm…. It’s almost as if it is an argument against Plato. “The prohibited reproduction” The title alone evokes rebellion. We cannot see the back of our heads and the only way we ever could is with a reproduction, like the figure in the painting. Does that mean the back of our head isn’t real? And by gazing upon the painting, someone behind you would see you as you see the painting, and someone could stand behind them, and so on. Each observer seeing in someone what they can never see themselves. Almost like the artist found this little glitch in Plato’s philosophy that repeats into eternity. It’s as if he is saying art or “reproduction” is the only way to know the unknowable.
It could be simpler too: the mirror (one mirror, alone) cannot do this. But this phrase is also used with respect to items under copyright, indicating that the copyright owner is forbidding the creation of copies.
Of course, the back of your head is real!! If it wasn't, your brains would've fallen out, thus vacating your cranial vault a loooonnngg time ago!! Or perhaps it has, and you've not realised it yet? 🤔
great video! i personally think that the book is often overlooked when talking about this piece. the way it is reflected & the subject isnt.. its almost like saying that the type of books we read is a far greater reflection of what type of a person we are than any image or reflection in the mirror of us. looks are deceptive.. beautiful faces could be the most terrible ones. its can also be interpreted as.. a book makes you REFLECT on yourself by removing you from the moment & making you look at yourself from a foreign perspective- thus the subject looking at himself. welp thats just me. cheers!
That book is also Poe's only constribution to the Lovecraft mythos (Locecraft gransfathered it into the mythos as a non-fiction diary) and ends on a cryptic cliffhanger where the protagonist encounters... something... which he doesn't have enough information to understand. And then it stops. Leaving the interpretation up to the reeader. The end of PYM has been caleld a Black Mirror because how you interpret it says more about you than ti does about the story. And we have a painting here that seems to be playing witht he idea that paitnings say more about the artists and the audience than they do the subject. There is definately some thematic ressonance at play here. ...but I'm relutant to say EXACTLY what the meaning is, because that would really say more about mw than it would the painting. ;)
It's always been a fun playful surprise as a painting, as with many by Magritte; tho this one's extra-special. At first, one might think: 'There's nothing 'wrong' with this painting. Why is it famous? Then, half a second later, realize the truth: "The mirror image should be of his face! Not a repeat of the back of his head! C'est Impossible!" A brilliant play by Magritte.
@@carlcushmanhybels8159 Whoever could say 'There's nothing 'wrong' with this painting'? It immediately strikes us as an 'uncanny valley', when we can't make immediate sense of it My take is the 'unknowing of identity'. we cannot know ourselves 'from the outside'. The title adds an another dimension of a ban on reproduction, whether by mirror or 'reflection' . Whence the veto? is our un-knowable-ness god-inflicted? or self-inflicted?
Thank you for another deeply researched and beautifully produced documentary. Your channel is my all-time favorite. I just realized from this video that your French accent is also impeccable-my untrained ear suggests: Québécois? ☺️
Apart from all the thought-provoking discussion, this video suddenly made me realise the inspiration for the cover of Gary Numan’s album “The Pleasure Principle”!
The only thing I can say to this video is....bravo! I had to study Magritte for an arts foundation course and you covered more in six minutes than my tutor did in six months.
This video was quite well packaged and researched - subscribed! I've loved this painting for a long time (even have a print in my room) but was okay with not totally understanding it. I do think however that art can get closer to the truth than other 'real' documents.
Art starts with appreciation and the desire to increase skill. Stopping the clock, concentrating and the enjoyment of the artists own personal expression of truth. It is a need...like breathing...
the 1939 "Portrait" is actually a "Porktrait". and though it's a stupid pun, i wouldn't be surprized if Magritte thought of it too (it works in french too "Porctrait"). the Belgians have an amazing sense of humour.
Specifically, Plato believed in his Theory of Forms, that the purest abstraction of any given thing or idea is the true "Form" of something, and that all that we will see of them is a shadow of it. He used the metaphor of the cave to detail this relationship. Humanity was represented in a cave. Inside the cave, there is giant stone, facing a wall, and behind that stone, a fire and some shadow puppeteers. Humanity is shown as chained to the wall-facing stone, and that all of our experience is merely a shadow puppet version of the truth. The people do not know of the fire or the puppets or the puppeteers, only what they see on the wall, and they only know it as true. He theorized that there would come a time when mankind would be freed, en masse or individually, from this stone, and would discover the truth of their situation. Of course, none of the others would be believe the ones who were freed. The world to them is shadow puppets, to tell them they are just shadow puppets is to tell them their world is a lie. The only way to learn the truth is to see it yourself, and the truth, according to Plato, is that there exists perfect forms of abstractions, and only outside of this cave can they all be seen. "Bedness," for example from the video. A Bed, and all that it implies, in it's purest abstractions, made realized. This would be it's Form. Of course, humanity is still incapable of realizing such a thing. We can make beds, we can make damn great beds, with the best cushions and mattresses and pillows and frames, the best night sleep the human body can ask for, but it will never fully be "Bed." This is why Plato also viscerally despised artists. He believed that they served only to further obfuscate Forms, to perpetuate the growing homogeny of abstraction, to associate Forms with other abstractions completely alien to them. To associate Red with Blood, for example, is to take away from "Redness," the purest idea of the color of Red. To associate Blood with Red takes away from the idea of "Bloodness," and the complex meanings of it, and all that it implies. Injury, life, violence, penance, medicine, they are all implied by Blood, and are inherent to humans interactions with Blood, but all such associations take away from the pure idea of "Bloodness," of the most unique characteristics of what makes blood, blood, and similarly the color Red does not imply any of this on it's own. "Redness" only implies an ever more saturated shade of Red, infinitely redder than itself until no change could ever be discerned. "Bloodness" implies all interactions of blood, all it's characteristics, made infinitely more unique to itself until all that remains is a perfect Form of Blood. To us, they may seem inseparable on any physical level- human blood is Red, but as far as their purest Forms are concerned, they are immutable, and run infinitely parallel, never to intersect, no matter what practical world-shackled meanings could be derived from doing so, and no matter how contradictory these Forms are inherently to each other to do so. He did not despise artists for their art. As imagery and messages to the worldly human race, they do their jobs perfectly, they are simply Art, but Plato's grand cosmic worldview was that art existed to turn pure abstractions of Forms into ever more meaningless noise, to turn "Bedness" into wood frames and cotton throws, and then to turn that into comfort, sadness, sex, dreams, a non-thing in the background of a painting or story. He believed artists eradicated Forms. It was all very Lovecraftian, actually. These days, you could easily disregard Plato as a raving schizophrenic for his Theory of Forms, that there is some meta-truth to all of reality, that there exists pure, infinite realization of all abstractions that the human brain simply cannot fathom in their entirety, and that artists, despite there being a Form of "Artness" somewhere in this fold, were a direct threat to the perception of Forms themselves. Perception as Reality was one of Plato's biggest talking points in regards to art, and how it affects the world. When we collectively agree on an association, instead of the truth as it is, what comes from it? How deeply do we believe in the shadows on the wall?
I went to the Magritte exhibition in Brussels a few years ago. I found a lot of the images quite distrubingly violent - but these are a lot less well known than the famous portraits
Excellent, as always. Thanks, man! (In my teaching, I prefer to call a portrait "a fiction" rather than "a lie." It makes me crazy when somebody says that the artist "captured the true character" of the sitter. This is absurd. Walt Whitman stated it well, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes." There is no one "true character." It is very hard to get the student to understand that his/her primary concern is not with the narrative-the objects being painted-but with how to make a PICTURE out of them.)
3:52 - Actually, it's not even that. It's paint applied to a canvas forming the shape of _text_ representing the words "this is not a pipe" under some more paint that might make you think of a pipe.
Some years ago the National Gallery of Australia bought Magritte's The Lovers. A man and woman looking at each other but their faces are covered in a fabric so they can't actually see each other. It's at once a thrilling painting and immensely disturbing at the same time.
If you haven't already, (new subscriber) an in depth look at Andrew Wyeth's, Christina's World might make an interesting video topic. I've been fascinated by Magritte for half my life. In school, I even made a reproduction- I know- of The Kiss, which is yet another piece that obscures the face of his subjects.
While watching this, in one of the close-ups of the painting, I noticed something that now makes me want to learn more about Magritte. If, today, you buy a pre-made, stretched canvas at any art supply store, you'll get a surface where the "grain" of the canvas (the alignment of the threads in the cloth) is more or less perpendicular to the edges; i.e. up and down, left to right. However, when Magritte painted this, presumably like most painters at the time (and many still), he prepared and stretched his own canvas. When the video zooms in on this painting you can clearly see that the canvas was stretched at an angle. About 55°. That is so wild to me, because it opens up a whole new dimension of painting that I never even thought about before.
I certainly learned quite a bit in this video. Now I’m wondering if there’s any significance to “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” or if it was just a book at hand. Probably it means something, but it’s been more than 30 years since I read it and I don’t remember the details. Impressive, nailing the pronunciation of the painting’s title.
I’m genuinely wondering that too! I’m glad I’m not the only one! I was looking through the comments to see if anyone else had the same question, Myself I know, everything in art is done with reason, and I wanna know the significance or symbolism of the book. Especially with how clealry it’s painted.
I've always seen this painting as aman who has positioned himself and a book, approximating his position in front of a painting of himself in the same position beside the same book, providing this curious illusion for the subject of a second painting from the artist's perspective.
I get the idea. But why call it a "lie" tho? It's someone's portrayal of the idea of a bed, his own truth. It's not like the painter "lie" and shy away from the true meaning of a bed.
I dont believe he himself thinks its a lie but rather how plato would think of a painting of bed, I disagree with that and think u have a point, a painting of a bed could be closer to ones idea of a bed “the true bed” than a physical bed
Hearing the theory of Plato and how this painting by Magritte may be referencing it gave me a little shock. I had been thinking a short time before viewing it, that only way to get truth of any given time in history may be in the form of its forbidden art. I am working through my complicated and obscured genealogy which has a lot of "dead ends" in the Franco-Prussian war era. Seeing some of the more subversive art of the time gave me a better mental picture of the more hard to imagine features of the life of my ancestors. And as a side note, as much as I love Magritte and the novelty of the Arthur Pym copy in the image, it would creep me out to no end to have this hanging in my library. (but I still want it)
I don't understand this videos interpretation of this painting, but I think that's how Surrealism operates sometimes. Surrealist paintings move like living things
Where Plato is _wrong_ is: you can’t lay down and sleep on the concept of Bed. So if a bed purpose is to be able to sleep in it, the concept of Bed is false. Plato wasn’t really wrong but his assumption creates a paradox.
I interpreted the “it is not a pipe” painting as the Surrealist going against the Bourgeois society. Saying that we will call things what we want and not let it be told to us.
The idea being: The sitter (though standing) asked for his portrait; but, impossible to produce, received this artistic reproduction in lieu. Did he actually sit for his, or was this a virtual presence distilled? Each brushstroke compounded, hypothetically, adding essence.
P.p.s. I come at this topic from the point of view of a visual neuroscientist studying perception and the way in which hus art engages perception and our brain so it is a very interesting topic
He's not looking at his own portrait, he's looking into a mirror, specifically a large over-mantle mirror. The reflection of the book proves this. But rather than see what we expect to see, the front side of the figure, reflected back at us, we are seeing exactly what we see: the figures back.
It is said, in the Dao De Ching, "The Dao which can be spoken of, is not the true Dao." In Zen Buddhism, it is likewise said, "One can only _point_ to the moon."
Deep question here - I really enjoyed this thought process; art, or art with reflection being third or fourth removed from the truth. Then as the video ended and the painting was displayed again a thought jarred me, the book isn't reversed. What does that say about the book and its relationship to ideal truth?
Maybe the book just happened to be sitting on the mantle - coulda been a statue, or a vase of flowers. Not reversed because - lazy? You have to paint the words backwards - what a pain in the ass. Or do you mean, "Why that book?" Not sure. First published in 1838 it starts out like most nautical novels then gets… strange. It is Edgar Allan Poe after all. It would inspire Melville's "Moby Dick" and Verne's "20 000 Leagues Under the Sea" At one point in "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" the narrator and few others are castaway at sea in a life boat. They are starving and draw straws to see who will be dinner for the others. Poor guy named Richard Parker gets the short straw. In 1884 a boat sank off the Cape of Good Hope. For real this time. A few survivors were castaway at sea in a life boat. Starving, they drew straws to see who will be dinner for the others. Poor guy named Richard Parker. I don't know if Magritte knew that - or if it has any bearing on anything. Life imitates art???
@@brucefreadrich1188 at the risk of becoming even more esoteric, perhaps it's about imagining oneself, books often lead us to empathize with the characters or imagine ourselves as them. I would hazard a guess that the mirror is just a metaphor, or that it was never a mirror, it merely resembles a mirror.
I just think he wanted to paint something that people would be trying to explain almost 90 years later; in that he succeeded. But was it worth succeeding at? I'm sure people will spend almost a century discussing that too.
He would probably think of Biscuits as food, that there could be good and bad biscuits, with good or bad ingredients and recipes, and that people would react to them in different ways, but that no biscuit ever baked could be considered "Pure Biscuit." Plato would dislike many artistic renditions of biscuits because at best they are showing another "Impure Biscuit," and at worst, they are attaching symbolism and meanings to the Form of a "Pure Biscuit" that are not actually present in "Biscuitness." Something as simple as saying or implying that a biscuit is delicious goes against the idea of a "Pure Biscuit," which would simultaneously be infinitely delicious and disgusting, rendering the difference nonexistent in the face of what does make a biscuit, immutably, a biscuit. That it is baked. That is it is food. That it is simply and perfectly "A biscuit." The issue with the Theory of Forms is that Forms are entirely based off of human perception, so even if Plato thought that humans perceiving "Pure Biscuits" wrong would make them "Impure," the idea of what makes a biscuit a biscuit without individual minutia of what it is on a physical level makes it indescribable. The only way a form could exist is if it encompassed all that it's Form would imply. There simultaneously exists a pure biscuit that no human on earth could imagine the specifics of, and yet by suggesting there is such a thing at all, it makes the Theory of Forms a contradiction. If Plato argued that Forms contained "Pure Biscuits, and all that they imply," then Pure Biscuits could be delicious and disgusting, but they would cease to be "Pure Biscuit." The human brain simply cannot imagine ANY of the Forms we can suggest. Our brains are meat, our chemistry is autonomous, our thoughts are hardwired to certain biological patterns and chemical interactions and the laws of physics. Plato suggests that Forms are real, we are just not able to know them, not without us being freed from the cave and seeing the outside of it ourselves.
I m new, surprise et très emballée de ton travail !!! J ai mis la tite cloche, BIEn HÂTE DE m éduquer aux peintres, Car je suis moi même artiste peintre autodidacte et je recherche Toujours à agrandir mes horizons en histoire de l art !! Donc merci!!!
Thanks, more understandable to me now ... 😊 What is the point of the book ? And its correct reflection ? And perhaps the choice of this specific novel ... 😬
What about something like an apple? Is a physical apple a rendition of the idea of an apple? I would think not in that there were apples before the words for it came to be. It’s simply named.
I’m commenting only a couple minutes into this video, but I’ll bet photographer has reproduced that painting without editing, just with two strategically placed mirrors. Heck, it can even be reproduced as an interactive art installation.
The actual object slept upon is the bed. The idea is not a bed, the image is not a bed, nor are the letters B E D a bed. Just because someone says something does not mean they are correct, and when an incorrect notions floats about w/o challenge it becomes a bad thing, for art and life.
Y'know, I never really cared for Platonic idealism - it just seems to be full of holes as a philosophy (for example, arguing that there's some eternal pre-existing form for things like beds, which item did not even exist before humans started building them). So I guess I'm glad Magritte was into illustrating those holes in such abstractions.
I wouldn’t get hung up on the ‘pre-existing form’ definition, since it’s misleadingly focused on the literal. Perhaps the word ‘concept’ or ‘category’ would be more helpful. The classic philosophical example is to define a chair. It is an anecdotal reality that humans have no challenge identifying a chair, but if you try to define it then you get into trouble: “A chair is something you sit on” Is a bed a chair? Is your butt a chair? Etc. And so on until you do peculiar things like look at an atomic scale, where it is not possible to distinguish a chair from other interactions of polymers and molecules. Where does the chair begin and the rest of the soup of chemicals end? Perhaps a simpler example: does a wave in the ocean really exist? We can recognise it, and the word has meaning, and we do not struggle to understand it, but where is the boundary of the wave? Is it merely a property of all water or all liquids? Is the whole ocean a wave? If not, when can you definitively say one comes into being and when does it dissipate? The use of Plato from this perspective is to suggest that there are apparent conceptual inevitabilities - chairs, waves, objects and categories - that are somehow other than the physical object in front of us. Aristotle talked about ‘accidental’ properties - this chair is made of wood, but no chair *must* be made of wood. But in reality *all* chairs have some properties that are not essential to that of a chair. So we can somehow conceptualise ‘chair’ in a way that can’t ever exist in the world. Sounds pretty much like that ‘pre-determined form’ you mentioned - only without that ‘did it exist before humans thought about it’ roadblock, which I don’t personally find very helpful. The ‘essential form’ part can take you further than trying to beat your head against some idea that all possible inventions already exist in some supra-cosmic photocopy station.
@Gary Allen This kinda misses the point… You can have the concept of ‘bed’ as in something or -where designated for sleeping without the object you would order from IKEA existing, just as anthropological studies show the distinction between visual acuity and linguistic categories. The entire thesis is that we can fluently interact with concepts that resist simple definition, which seems paradoxical. To take your colour example: you can tell me that any number of different things are all ‘blue’, but you can’t tell me definitively where ‘green’ begins. You could even distinguish between those many ‘blues’, without being able to say at which wavelength one makes the switch to another. The same would be true for your person with only the words ‘light’ and ‘dark’ available… How many photons per cubic or square metre before a ‘dark’ room or surface becomes ‘light’?
Interesting, thanks, but you can't sleep in the idea of a bed. The distinction is perhaps why philosophy is now not much more than an historical footnote.
If that is a real mirror then the image in the mirror is a prohibited reproduction because, as we all know, it would never happen in real life. I see the painting more as an intriguing and playful way of giving the viewer a kind of Zen jolt.
For a heck of a lot of Canadians and a few Americans as well, it IS "Mah-grit." Ever heard someone speak French with a Québecois accent? Edited to add: I'm not meaning to be snarky by saying this. Lots of people genuinely don't realize that native French speakers in North America have a different accent - much as Americans and English people speak with different accents. Just trying to put some knowledge out there. :-)
Hard disagree that the first truth is the idea of a thing. The idea and/or reception of reality actually the first removal from it. Therefore the idea and the art are both on the same level of removedness. Both likenesses and reproduction of a real thing in the world.
The "rendition" of the bed is the real bed. The idea of the bed and the representation of the bed are both once removed from reality if you do not include all things that exist under the definition of reality.
It's a good video. I was going to leave a snarky comment but others have left such thoughtful comments. To me the argument about "truth" falls apart if truth is the concept of an object. If the mental creation of a "bed" = truth, it is very hard to sleep upon. In fact one would experience the cold truth of sleeping upon the ground. I would rather have the second reproduction of "truth", the carpenter's conception, complete with soft mattresses, fluffy quilts...etc. (This may be an ignorant comment. If so, call me a philistine! LOL!)
I think you're missing thr fact that the concept of the bed is a comfortable place to sleep, to rest after a long day's hard work, take a nap on a sunday afternoon or, a place to dream, have intimate conversations after lovemaking on it, a place to tuck in a child, for bedtime stories and reading a good book, a symbol of the marital bond, a place for passions and prayer, for weeping, for falling asleep and waking up energized or hung over, the place we spend a third of our lives, a birthplace of ideas and also humans themselves, a cool place in hot climates, a warm one in cold weather, and so much more. A particular bed is only one interpretation of this, befitting the circumstances and needs of that person or maker, and therefore there is no physical bed that quite captures and realizes the concept fully. It's also merely a thing, wheras the idea invovles the actions, many images, nuances, ages and peoples and uses of it. The mind is a marvelous place that way. The early surrealist filmmakers like Duchamp and Maya Deren experimented with trying to capture this magic of the mind, the subconscious, dreams, ideas and puzzling in moving imagery. If a philosopher like Plato questioned the validity of art from a perspective of ideals of truth, the Dadaists and Surrealists questioned the validity of the common concept of what art is, looks like, it's grammar and function and the salon/marketplace of art and the ideals of the elite funding it all, proporting that anything and everything can be art depending on who looks at it, how it's presented, and if you want it to be. Andy Warhol would later do the same but with less interest in philosophy and more with pure aesthetics, what things he saw everyday looked like. He made an early film many hours long of someone sleeping in a bed, uncut in real time. A projection of a bed but also someone sleeping in it, with all that it involves when watching it. I don't know if this makes any sense to you, but an attempt anyway.
Dear 'Canvas' person. fabulous video on this painting. I have a question: how can I get permission to show images of Magritte's works in a text I am writing. I am told that I cannot show any image of a painting by Magritte if it has been altered in any way. But your wonderful video illustrates how effective it is to be able to show altered versions (like when you 'erased' James' image from inside the frame of the mirror).
Technically it depends on how you are using the work. Such as a published book you will sell, or educational material, etc. There are organizations that handle various artists rights and reproduction. You should check with the museum that owns or houses the work of art. They should be able to give you information on how to acquire rights or let you know what you need to do for that particular work. Most artworks only become public domain after 75 years of the artists death but there are also some other exceptions that might prohibit you from reproducing the work even then, depending on who owns it.
@@russhamer Not offhand. I would check with the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that owns the specific piece of Magritte's. There is also the Magritte Foundation online. Also look into WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) they may have some resources that can help. Each country has different laws but the US in general will usually honor the laws of that country. Copyrights can be tricky. As an average person doing something I doubt you have to worry though. At worst you would get a "cease and desist" letter. And usually only if whatever organization finds it offensive in its use. But if you plan to invest a lot of money in a project or use it for economic gain, you definitely want to make sure you aren't overstepping copyrights. They will eventually come after you especially if it gets very wide attention and/or you are making a considerable amount of money off it.
@@bohem5568 thx. I wrote to the magrit foundation in Brussels. They referred me back to New York to the same place I had asked the 1st time. I have no economic interest in this strictly academic publication To examine the visual science aspects of his work. Thanks for the help
Aristotle was a fool... all three things: the thought, the reality, the depiction of reality, are just aspects of the same thing... We think, we make, we think about... aspects of our understanding... what matters to me, is the act of thinking, and the act of creation... Magritte is profound because he shows us that our assumption about thinking and creating are just that... assumptions...
@@whatthefridge1o1 Well, I speak English first (US) and learned French later, so I'm no expert! But I've been to France and I've been to Québec, and he sounds more québecois than French to me. I could be wrong.
