The treachery of images, and the elusiveness of their copyright status

Duke’s Public Domain Day 2025 post discusses René Magritte‘s pipe painting, “La Trahison des Images”, and the difficulty of determining whether US copyright law considers it “published” in 1929, and therefore public domain in 9 days.

A related work we know meets that criterion is his illustrated essay “Les Mots et Les Images”, showing distinctions between words, images, and objects, which his painting also expresses. It’s in the last issue of La Révolution Surréaliste.

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About John Mark Ockerbloom

I'm a digital library strategist at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.
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