The Treachery of Images

René Magritte

Magritte does not tell us anything we don’t know. And yet in a single graphic, paired with a single line so obvious it goes without saying, he turns the world of art on its head. This is not a pipe, he proclaims in cursive lettering under a drawing that is unmistakably of a pipe. It is, this painting reminds us explicitly, a mere representation, it is a painting of a pipe and can never transcend its medium. It was a radical proposition to make, that artworks are signifiers and not to be mistaken for the actualities. For most of history, artworks were cherished, worshipped things depicting unbridled truth, and even as modernity crept up with Impressionism and the dawn of abstraction, paintings still were vessels of emotion, feeling and showed the world as it really was. This painting was a flag in the ground declaring revolution, marking a new age where surrealism would thrive and the painting would be freed from any requirements of truth or reality. All of a sudden, a painting needed to be nothing but a painting.

Tuesday 22nd September

Today we arrive at the autumn equinox, when light and darkness come into near balance, marking a threshold in the turning year. In the biodynamic picture, the Earth begins to draw its breath inward, gathering beneath the soil what summer expressed in leaf, flower and fruit. In the garden, we can honour this movement by gathering ripe crops, saving seeds and returning plant remains to the compost, where one season’s growth becomes nourishment for the next. Covering bare soil offers a simple gesture of care as the nights lengthen. As the sunlight retreats, we can welcome its image into our homes through the gentle flame of a candle, taking a quiet moment to meditate and carry its warmth within us. This small light reminds us that even as darkness deepens, the light will return. Within each seed rests the quiet promise of another beginning.

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