The Tune and Also the Words

1964

René Magritte
Belgian, 1898-1967

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.”

Status: On View, Gallery 397
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: René Magritte
Title: The Tune and Also the Words
Place: Belgium (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1964
Medium: Gouache over traces of graphite on cream wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed and inscribed, lower left: "magritte"; inscribed lower center: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe"; inscribed verso, lower right: "L'Air et la Chanson"
Dimensions: 36.2 × 54.8 cm (14 5/16 × 21 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection
Reference Number: 2018.332
Copyright: © 2018 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Paul Nougé, “Pour Illustrer Magritte,” Le Faiit Accompli 34-35 (Apr. 1970), n.p. (ill.).
Suzi Gablik, Magritte (Greenwich, Conn., 1971), pp. 128, 201, pl. 111.
A.M. Hammacher, René Magritte (New York, 1973), p. 33, fig. 35.
Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco (editor), Surrealismo, Omaggio a André Breton, exh. cat. (Rome, 1976), p. 156 (ill.).
Robert Short, Dada and Surrealism (London, 1980), p. 110, fig. 105.
Petra von Morstein, “Magritte: Artistic and Conceptual Representations,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41:4 (1983), pp. 372-73.
Laurie Edson, “Disrupting Conventions: Verbal-Visual Objects in Francis Ponge and René Magritte,” L’Esprit Créateur 24:2 (Summer 1984), PP. 28-29.
Laurie Edson, “Confronting the Signs: Words, Images, and the Reader-Spectator,” Dada/Surrealism 13 (1984), p. 91.
René Magritte, Lettres à André Bosmans, 1958-1967, edited by Francine Perceval (Brussels, 1990), pp. 392, 394.
Magritte Catalogue, vol. 3 (1993), p. 192, no. 1570; vol. 4 (1994), p. 277, no. 1570 (ill.).
Dawn Ades, with Margherita Andreotti and Adam Jolles, Surrealist Art: The Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1997), pp. 175–77, cat. 87 (color ill.).

Paris, Alexander Iolas Gallery, “Magritte: Le Sens Propre,” 1964, cat. 38.
Possibly New York, Alexander Iolas Gallery, “Magritte: Le Sens Propre,” 1965, no cat.
London, Hanover Gallery, “Poetic Image,” 1969, n.p. (ill.).
London, Hanover Gallery, “Pen, Pencil, and Paper,” 1970, n.p. (ill.).
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, “Surréalisme et Peinture,” 1974, cat. 46.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Words at LIberty,” 1977, pp. 8 (ill.), 17.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Dada and Surrealism in Chicago Collections,” 1984–1985, fig. 1, pp. 85, 172.
Art Institute of Chicago, “A Tribute to Edwin A. Bergman (1917–1986): Selections from the Lindy and Edwin Bergman Collection,” 1986, pamphlet no. 34.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Toward the Future: Contemporary Art in Context,” 1990, pamphlet.

Alexander Iolas Gallery, Paris, by 1964; sold to the Hanover Gallery, London, by 1969. Sold by E. Hammer Gallery, Paris, to the Pace Gallery, New York, Oct. 1973 [Kanoi Keith of the Pace Gallery, New York, in a phone conversation of August 24, 1995]; sold, Museum of Contemporary Art Third Benefit Auction, Chicago, Nov. 15, 1975, lot 43, to Lindy and Edwin Bergman, Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018.

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