Ceci ñ’ est pas une oeil

The Painting ‘Ceci ñ’ est pas une oeil’ isn’t a parody of Rene Magritte’s famous painting ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. It’s a meditation on human interaction. Rene Magritte’s play on words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ is not, of course a pipe, it is a painting of a pipe. ‘Ceci ñ’ est pas une oeil’ is not an eye, it is a painting of an eye, and if the principle is taken further, it still wouldn’t be a human eye. Or would it? 

The American sculptor Anna Coleman Ladd helped soldiers regain a manageable place in society by creating prosthetics to disguise their war-ravaged faces. The, so called ‘Great War’, gave birth to the Dada and Surrealist movements, how could it not? After the madness, these early Guineapigs became acceptable to frail sensibilities by the power of Art; ‘the porcelain eye IS an eye’.