What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? Rene Magritte's famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction.

Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of renowned Belgian painter Rene Magritte - the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist - in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos and much more, a new Magritte emerges: part Surrealist, part literalist, part celebrity, part rascal.While this book is bound to appeal to admirers of Magritte's art and those who are curious about his personal life, there is also much to delight all readers interested in the history and theory of art, philosophy and politics, as well as lovers of creativity and the inner workings of a probing, inquisitive mind unrestricted by genre, medium or fashion.