Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une Pipe" has become latently popular, an anthem for the cool tastemakers of the early 21st century. The painter's latest copycat—in his day he was a peer to such surrealists as Dali and Ernst—is British couture designer Anya Hindmarch. Her $15-dollar canvas totes, (read: nothing else in her store has ever cost so little), read, "I'm not a plastic bag." The anti-plastic totes have caused such a fuss among the eager eco-consumers in Manhattan that they lined up 600 deep outside the new Whole Foods at Bowery and Houston this last Tuesday to buy the latest "limited edition" of Hindmarch's canvas tote.
On the subject of plastic bags--you know, the sort they usually double-bag at your local grocer--I recently heard that plastic bags cost 2-cents to make and 8-cents to recycle. Which is why you have to take them, stuffed inside eachother again and again, to that specific deposit site at your local grocer. And they're still not making money. (Don't know the drop? Just ask a clerk.)
Wouldn't the man behind the pipe have gagged at the idea of his playful masterwork being co-opted by a 21st century promotional campaign, stripped entirely devoid of its original intent? Eh, maybe not. "This is not a..." is ever receiving new meaning, guaranteeing Magritte's name in the art history analogues just a little longer.
All of this makes me feel *slightly* less bad about posting on Laura Bush's "Feed the Children of the World" burlap shoulder bag campaign--a la Spring Fashion Week NYC 2007. Sort of, but not really. That posting came from a period in my blog before I gave perimiters to my blogging form. (Which, for the record, will henceforth only on rare occassion link to a post that is not entirely my original thoughts.) !
