René Magritte revitalizes viewers' perceptions by presenting everyday objects in unexpected contexts. His iconic work "The Treachery of Images" (1929) features a single pipe with the French phrase "Ceci n’est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe) written below it. This piece creates a strong, paradoxical interaction between the image and the text, each denying the other—while the painting depicts a pipe, it asserts that it is not actually a pipe but merely an image of one. It highlights the distinction that an artist's depiction of an object can be highly realistic but remains a 'representation' rather than the object itself.
Similarly, in this work, a piece titled "This is a piece of cheese" placed on a marble plate covered with a glass dome does not depict real cheese but a painting of a piece of cheese within a frame. This juxtaposition of language, image, and reality showcases the mismatch between them. Through such disparities, Magritte explores the incomplete relationship between the subjects represented through language and images and what they reproduce.