Discuss The Relationship Between Type and Image Through Interpreting and Understanding Representation
“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” (Berger, 1972, p.7)
It is as John Berger wrote, the relationship is never settled, this essay is a chance to address how the relationship between type and image works and how we interpret and understand the world through a series of representations, through semiotics, as the study of cultural sign processes. Umberto Eco notes that semiotics is somewhere between ‘a mental image, a concept, and a physiological reality’. (Chandler, 2002, p.16))
Belgian Surrealist, Rene Magritte painted ‘La Trahison des Images’ translated in English to, ‘The Treachery of Images’ or sometimes ‘The Treason of Images’, in 1929. It is an oil painting on canvas, of a pipe, with the inclusion of text in the image, this piece of art has created extraordinary revelations in the way we read the painting, and in turn how we can look at the world. The questions we ask ourselves to find the meaning within the text. It is understood that as a species we are homo significans, meaning makers, this is fundamental in our understanding of the world. We do this through the interpretation of signs.
Saussure shows the model of the sign to be a two part system, he showed the sign to consist of a ‘signifier’, which is the form the sign takes, and the ‘signified’ the concept it represents. This relationship between the signifier and the signified is known as the ‘signification’. (Daniel Chandler, 2002, p.15). Charles Sanders Peirce says “We only think in signs”. Signs can take the form of anything but do not necessarily mean anything or have any value unless we as a culture give reference to such objects. “Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign”, declares Peirce. (Chandler, 2002, p.13)
The painting depicts a realistic version of what we would call a pipe, a simple common smoker’s pipe. The object we refer to as a pipe is centred in the middle of the painting, and is against a simple plain light murky yellow background. The painting itself denotes the pipe to be dark brown in colour and from a side angle shows the pipe from one thick side, in order to put tobacco, to a thinner side as the mouth piece, where the pipe has a gold ring, coloured black on the opposing side. The painting is highly realistic and has not been painted to look like a painting, with no visible brush marks. The painting however does not depict any shadows cast from the pipe, and therefore floating in the composition but the painting is shown to be 3D from the use of light hitting the painting from the top left, giving the surface a polished look.
What makes this painting so interesting however is Magritte’s choice of the inclusion of text in the painting. The type is in cursive and sits below the image in black, it reads ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (‘This is not a pipe’). This statement gives us cause to pause and think of implications this has, as image and text disagree. The painting is so clearly a smoker’s pipe, without it being recognised or mistaken as anything else, it is then that we see this statement in the painting and initially perceive the image as ‘elementary or perverse’ states Foucault. The text easily displaced the image as easy as writing an opposing statement. The composition of the image is displayed like a children’s reading book, where you could find the words ‘This is a pipe’ educating your child on what a pipe is, with a clear indication of how it looks, this is what seems perverse to the viewer (Chandler, 2002 p69).
The statement itself, ‘This is not a pipe’, in English is made up of signifiers in themselves. The letters /T/ / H/ /I/ /S/ / for example are individual sound concepts and as signifiers. This is the basis of communication as a cultural society, how we understand and break down communication problems is how we interpret signs as signs. All representations can be influenced or altered depending, the selection and use “We are in a world of objects, with given names, in turn the exchange and movement of letters and so forth we can understand objects as a concept. The name is a concept” (Marcel Swiboda, Reality, Virtuality and Hyperreality Lecture, 9th December 2010)
In Malcolm Barnard’s book, ‘Graphic Design as Communication’ his thoughts on Magritte’s painting and choice of the inclusion of text is that “pointing out that this is not a pipe is to draw attention first to the fact that it is a representation of a pipe and second to the fact that we routinely refer to representations as though they were the actual thing represented.” This is incredibly common as representations are there simply to stand in for another; one thing (being the signifier) stands in for another (the signified). It is this that is being emphasized by Magritte; the text accompanying the image of the pipe displaces the pipe as an object, and shows us merely a representation.
Michel Foucault’s reading of the text is that it undermines the relation between image and text, as that relation is normally experienced. Seeing a pipe represented like this we would say it is a pipe but what Magritte’s pipe does is show us exactly what it is and makes it clear that it is a representation. Foucault wrote on the subject that “representation [can be put] into two categories, ‘resemblance’ and ‘similitude’”. Where resemblance is the degree or extent to which a likeness exists, similitude is a similarity of likeness but there is strong difference in the two, which both Foucault and Magritte agree on, “‘Resemblance’ and ‘similitude’ need to be differentiated. That much is inescapable”. (Levy, 1990, p.50)
Foucault’s leading argument was that resemblance allocates how the relationship is comparable in certain respects, analogous, between an object and its reproduction. In letters to and from Foucault and Magritte, they discussed various issues and Magritte’s readings from books Foucault had published. In a letter from Magritte to Foucault he explains the principles of the two words, resemblance and similitude.
“It seems to me that for example, green peas have between them relations of similitude at once visible (their colour, form, size) and invisible (their nature, taste, weight). It is the same for the false and the real, etc. Things do not have resemblances, they do or do not have similitude’s.
Only thought resembles. It resembles by being what it sees, hears, or knows, it becomes what the world offers it." (Foucault, 1968, p.57)
Magritte’s thoughts on the two words are quite inspiring and interesting to the extent of how he has summarised what could be seen as aspects of its similitude, and resemblance. This can be applied to his very own painting, what is real and what is unreal. The representation of the pipe in this sense has to be looked at carefully and how the similitude and resemblance could shed light on the painting, The Treachery of Images.
It is from this interpretation of these two words it can be identified that the similitude of the painting bears what is physical, and what we can see from the painting. This is what we denote from the painting. As stated the pipe depicts an accurate portrayal of what a standard pipe would look like, a common pipe, a painting which does justice to our look on the depth and lighting of this object. The resemblance of this pipe however is down to the viewer, what it connotes, how it is placed in the mind. Firstly the sense of lighting connotes to us the object is to be regarded as 3D, but even this is a representation. The connotation of the pipe as an object announces a sense of old fashion, and quite a grand and posh object.
When reading the image, and we notice what is written underneath the well placed object there is a shift in our thinking. ‘This is not a pipe’ forces us to review what the painting is actually denoting. The painting here in turn is an argument between the words and images, there is a decision soon to be made as to which point of communication is truly giving us an accurate message or the meaning intended by the artist.
As Malcolm Barnard wrote in Graphic Design as Communication, Foucault on Graphic Design, that when looking at generalised compositions including text and image, the text will take over the role of the illustration, as Barnard put it ‘anchor’ images. And in turn, images portray or ‘shed light on’ the text. (Barnard, M., 2005, p.49)
This seems to be an accurate formula to how type and image works, but here with The Treachery of Images, it is no longer clear as to how these interpretations of image and texts work within the paintings. It is this slight conflict in messages that has led to such discussion and controversy of how we interpret objects and their representations in everyday life. There is at first to be a breakdown in semiotics, at a basic level there are two signifiers in the image, but they are opposing.
Representations are spoken and accepted as the real thing in culture, it is unoften that we are shown what is ultimately a crude truth, but what is actually reality within portrayal. This is by making it so apparent that it is not an object but a representation as illustration. The illustration was therefore to shed light upon the meaning to the words, and the text to anchor the image, but the point has been made to make this redundant. Its representation therefore was only to give meaning to another representation. Therefore leaving the signifier and the signified obscured, and arbitrary to how we read the images, the representation has become a product of cultural choice as any illustration no matter how simple can be turned to an ineffective signifier. What is communicated to us has been altered by another representation.
Rene Magritte
‘La Trahison des Images’, translated as ‘The Treachery of Images’
1929.
Bibliography
Berger, J., 1972. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.
Chandler D., 2002. Semiotics. The Basics. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Levy, S., 1990. Foucault on Magritte on Resemblance, Modern Language Review Vol. 85, p.50
Barnard, M. 2005. Graphic Design as Communication. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. 1968. This Is Not A Pipe. Los Angeles: University of California Press
