In 1968 Michel Foucault wrote an essay titled Ceci n’est pas une pipe (“This Is Not a Pipe”), which was inspired by René Magritte’s similarly titled work.Magritte’s unraveled calligrams, according to Foucault, help to show that neither language nor painting “can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”

In 1968 Michel Foucault wrote an essay titled Ceci n’est pas une pipe (“This Is Not a Pipe”), which was inspired by René Magritte’s similarly titled work.

Magritte’s unraveled calligrams, according to Foucault, help to show that neither language nor painting “can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”