Rene Magritte's "Personal Values"

[Go West Young Man]

Spotted at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. How sad is it that my first thought was how to ID the brush?


René Magritte Les valeurs personnelles (Personal Values), 1952; painting; oil on canvas, 31 1/2 in. x 39 3/8 in. (80.01 cm x 100.01 cm); Collection SFMOMA, Purchase through a gift of Phyllis Wattis;

[luvmysuper]

Good eye!
Beautiful Tortoise comb, and... is that Sandalwood soap?

[Go West Young Man]

I'm thinking he was French, probably some kind of Shea Butter soap....

[gearchow]

Too bad he painted a metal handle, the 50's had very nice colored catalin handles. None of the butter scotches that everybody loves now though.

-jim

[luvmysuper]

You know, I was musing on this "perception" thing a bit, and it is kind of funny how awareness colors perception.
Before I started work for the company i work for, I drove past Power Stations and never really noticed them. Now - I spot a smokestack miles in the distance.
Kind of like the guy who lived in Hawaii for so long that when he got back to CONUS, the first time he saw a U-Haul truck, he automatically pronounced it in his head as ooh-hah-ool.
What brought this all to mind was my drive out to pick up a Red Imp today, and on the way, I see this sign at a Garden and Nursery Supply that I see every day on the way to work.
It's a big white sign, and in big green letters it says SOD
And I tell you, every single day when I see it, the first thing that pops into my head is "Shave Of the Day".
So I can clearly see where any amount of time here at B&B could color your perception so that the brush in that painting stands out, and makes you kind of wish you could tilt your head a bit to see more of it.

[RazoRock]

A match but no pipe or tobacco

A house in the clouds would be really nice.

[_MementoMori_]

A match but no pipe or tobacco

Magritte's got you covered. Here's a pipe he painted in a separate piece called, strangely enough, "This is not a Pipe."

[dpm802]

Speaking of Magritte and perception ...



This is not a pipe.

Likewise, the painting of a shave brush is not useful for shaving.

Perhaps, we need a new category of Aquisition Disorder ... as evidenced by threads like this one, and threads where we discuss Movies & TVs with shaving scenes, and threads about a non-existent Encyclopedias of Shaving Brushes, etc.

I'm not sure what to call this disorder ... but we've all got it, bad.

[sid3000]

That pipe message always got on my nerves

[dpm802]

[luvmysuper]

The pipe painting is actually pretty interesting.
I assume his point being that this is NOT a pipe, it is canvas and paint and pigment, combined in such a fashion as to look to our eyes what a real pipe would look like.
Regarding the OP's message about seeing the brush in the painting and wondering what type it was - it seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test.
I wonder if any type of study has ever been done on the correlation between what kinds of questions a person has about a specific scene they observe, rather than what in particular they see.

[gearchow]

Ohhh, it's not a pipe. Well, it's not a painting either.

The word painting or for that matter art doesn't obtain in reality, they are just words used by our model of the world to describe the world as we see it. Too bad unlike software, we can't change our view models. I would like to see what a dog sees. Spend my time collecting soft cushy toys.

-jim