This is an attempt to mock the Surrealist painter, René Magritte, whose paintings often seem

to be mocking us. One of his most famous pictures shows a carefully painted pipe, with the words: ‘Ici n’est pas une pipe’ beneath it. It certainly looks like a pipe and yet, of course, it

is only a painting of one. What are we to make of this? Is there anything profoundly

philosophical about the idea as some critics suggest or is it just tomfoolery? Either way, it

usually gives the viewer a few uneasy moments of contemplation. In this painting: 'pipe' has

been replaced by: blague [joke] and, even if the character on his penny-farthing, intruding

upon the tranquil lives of all those fish viewing him superciliously, is not a joke then at least it

is plainly ridiculous.