Found Art Topic May 30th 2007: Close

This piece is called "Close, but no cigar"
The wording underneath is in French and says, "This is not a cigar. (This is free art!)"

I borrowed the idea from Rene Magritte's 1926 painting The Treachery Of Images (La trahison des images), "which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe, This is not a pipe (Ceci n'est pas une pipe), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe" (Wikipedia). As a media student, this image has had a significant impact on my understanding of symbols and the world of advertising. Probably too deep to go into on my blog, but I will say that we all too often make the mistake of accepting a symbol for the real thing. i.e. perfume which claims to be "intoxicating", "unforgivable", "sexy" or that it promises to magically make YOU "intoxicating", "passionate", "unforgetable"...hmmm c'est bullshit.

The term "close, but no cigar" came instantly to my mind when I saw Rosa's post last week. I had no idea what I would do with it until this morning when I rolled up a piece of recyled paper and it looked like a cigar! Immediately I remembered Magritte's pipe and away I went.

Just a bit of trivia as to where this term "close but no cigar" originated...

from Google phrase finder:

Meaning
Fall just short of a successful outcome and get nothing for your efforts.

Origin
The phrase, and its variant 'nice try, but no cigar', are of US origin and date from the mid-20th century. Fairground stalls gave out cigars as prizes, and this is the most likely source, although there's no definitive evidence to prove that.
It is first recorded in print in Sayre and Twist's publishing of the script of the 1935 film version of Annie Oakley:
"Close, Colonel, but no cigar!"
It appears in U. S. newspapers widely from around 1949 onwards. For example, a story from The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, November 1949, where The Lima House Cigar and Sporting Goods Store narrowly avoided being burned down in a fire, was titled 'Close But No Cigar'.