Rene Magritte once produced a painting titled, “La trahison
des image” (The Treachery of Images) in 1929 depicting an image of a painted pipe
on canvas. Upon this work, the audience immediately recognizes the fact that
the image in the painting is that of a pipe. However, our schematic means of
understanding the image soon proves to be a burden: by immediately categorizing
the image of a pipe as a pipe object,
the viewer falls into the pitfalls of perception – to the “treachery of images.”
The mind automatically jumps to the conclusion that “this is a pipe,” an
oversight Magritte seeks to address, and as seen in the texts below the
painting, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe), Magritte calls attention
to the fact that the viewer has jumped quite a number of steps in
understanding; the “pipe” we perceive through his painting is not a pipe, but a
painting, an image representative of our “pipe” schema.
Magritte questioned, can an image be the It? And, both Magritte and a typical,
literal definition of an image (as suggested by dictionaries and Wikipedia)
would agree upon defining an image as a form of representation and depiction of the external form of/or our visual
perception. I as well agree on the fact that images we are surrounded by
now are such things like photos of ourselves, friends and surroundings, texts,
billboards, movies, snack wrappers, flyers, and etc, which are indeed the representational
of what we perceive sensationally and represent into a physical two-dimensional
depiction (either for sharing or possessing for oneself). As humans are visual,
communicative and social animals, we have a tendency to communicate and express
ourselves via visual means, and thus we have continuously strived to develop
our means of communicating via images through technology such as the images we now
share via Smartphones, digital camera, printers, laptops, Facetime, Snapchat,
Facebook…etc. As we realize what we do through these means, we strive to represent what we see (perceive) in a biological
manner (sensual perception) by transferring such sensation into images. Thus, I
might come into a conclusion that images are manifestation (either physical or
electric) of our sensual perception (and they cannot be the it itself but only a representation)
However, one thought came into my mind immediately after
such conclusion. If an image is defined as a representation of external world,
how about representations of our imaginations, unconsciousness, thoughts, ideas
and many others that cannot be grasped or conceived as external world? Artists
do represent their unconscious, fantastical thoughts into their works,
sometimes by distorting reality and highly depending on their subjective
experience and perception. And for me, such thing definitely falls into a form
of image, as all of our perception is subjective and the process of
transferring our sensation/perception into an image cannot be objective but
subjective.
Eventually, I came to a conclusion that the form of images might
encompass different meanings/definition to different people. For example, for
computer engineers, images would mean mechanics of electric components successfully
working together to create a visual image through electrical engineering,
coding…etc. Or for my friends, image can be simply what they see in such things
as movies, pictures and magazines. For artists, image can be a medium in which
they express their perception, thoughts, imagination, opinions and even
fantasies or even unconsciousness.
Images are all around us and it involves both a mechanical
and subjective process of transferring our perception into some kind of
“result”.
One last additional question I have is, whether an image has
to strictly be “two-dimensional.” I agree upon the fact that the most of the
things that we define as images are two-dimensional and we do not say
three-dimensional forms like sculptures, architectures, statues…as an image. An
image would be, again, a two-dimensional reproduction of such three-dimensional
objects into such things as picture or drawings. But recently, I believe that
technology has started to break the boundary between this with the emergence of
such things as 3D images (movies…). But still, this question still remains baffling.
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