2013-12-12
Explanation
The Joke
A museum visitor is caught rolling up paintings of unusual objects and smoking them. A museum guard (wearing a bowler hat, resembling a figure from a Rene Magritte painting) tells him to stop. The visitor responds defiantly: "Fuck you, Rene Magritte! I don't see any rules posted." The guard ominously replies, "You will. From now on." In the final panel, labeled "Later," we see a Magritte-style painting of a pipe displayed in a museum with a sign beneath it reading "This painting explores the meaning of art as representation" -- but the implication is that this is actually the origin of Magritte's famous painting "The Treachery of Images" ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe" / "This is not a pipe"), reimagined as a "No Smoking" sign.
The Humor
The comic provides an absurd fictional origin story for Rene Magritte's most famous painting, "The Treachery of Images" (1929), which depicts a pipe with the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"). In reality, the painting is a philosophical statement about representation -- the image of a pipe is not itself a pipe. But in this comic, the painting was actually created as a passive-aggressive response to someone smoking rolled-up paintings in a museum. Magritte, as the museum guard, paints the pipe specifically to post rules about what you cannot do (smoke). The humor lies in reducing a profound work of philosophical art to a petty bureaucratic "no smoking" sign, and in the absurd scenario of someone smoking rolled-up paintings in the first place.
References
- Rene Magritte -- Belgian surrealist artist (1898-1967) known for his thought-provoking and witty paintings that challenged observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.
- "The Treachery of Images" (La Trahison des images) -- Magritte's 1929 painting showing a pipe with the text "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), one of the most famous works of surrealist art, exploring the relationship between objects and their representations.
- The museum guard's bowler hat is a signature element of many Magritte paintings, including "The Son of Man" (1964).