Blog 2: Pg.9-26

I found the first chapter to be very interesting when it talked about the practice of looking. It starts off by saying a single image can serve a multitude of purposes, appear in a range of settings, and mean different things to each observer (pg. 9). An example is the painting by Rene Magnitte, labeled “This is not a pipe”. He is testing the boundaries between words and things and how it is not a pipe itself; it is in fact a representation of a pipe (pg. 15). I think Magnitte did an amazing job at making the painting produce meanings that are not understood by someone just looking at it. The book points out that we are surrounded by images that experience much more layers of meaning beyond the obvious or their original objectives.