The Tune and Also the Words

René Magritte first conceived this famous image in oil on canvas in 1929, when he was most interested in the relationship between words and pictures. In this work from 1964, Magritte revisited the image, in gouache. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe) articulates that the reproduction of the pipe is not the pipe itself, nor is the word “pipe” an actual pipe, the implement to smoke tobacco. Magritte retitled this version The Tune and Also the Words (L’Air et la Chanson) because, as he put it, “it is desirable that such a thing is found in as many ‘households’ as possible.”