  Readers often take Heidegger’s deliberately provocative claim that “[t]he picture really represents nothing” as a flat-footed assertion that Van Gogh’s painting does not represent  shoes.[72] But that obscures Heidegger’s deeper point and, in fact, would make no more sense than if, beneath  “The Treason of Images” (1929)—Magritte’s realistic representation of a pipe against a blank background— Magritte had painted not the famous words, “This is not a pipe [Ceci n’est pas une pipe]” but instead: “This is not a representation of a pipe.” For, Magritte’s most obvious point is that a representation of a pipe (be it pictorial or linguistic) is not itself a pipe. The surreal effect of “The Treason of Images” comes from the way it encourages viewers to confront the usually unnoticed distance between representations and the things they represent. “This is not a pipe” calls the very obviousness of representation into question, and so points toward the mysteries concealed beneath the system of representation we usually take for  granted.[73]