Trompe l'Oeil Toilets
or
Ceci n'est pas une toilette
René Magritte was a famous Belgian surrealist artist (and also see the Toiletological Statues page for other Belgian surrealism related to toilets). One of his most famous works is La Trahison des Images, known in English as The Treachery of Images. It's the painting of a pipe, with the label Ceci n'est pas une pipe, or, in English, This is not a pipe. Magritte's point was that it was not a pipe, it was a picture of a pipe.
The whole point of trompe l'oeil (or "trick of the eye") art is convincingly realistic rendering. See, for example, the Warner Brothers cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote creates a trompe l'oeil image of a tunnel on a rock face at the end of a dead-end road. The Roadrunner can enter the tunnel but the Coyote cannot. And — unfortunately for the Coyote — large trucks, buses, and trains can suddenly exit the image.
Here is an example of trompe l'oeil artwork in the toilet. This is one of the toilets at the Castle Rock Hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Approaching...
Entering...
At left: the view from the loo.
Obviously this one needs the blue Sani-Flush border indicating one that I've used...
So is this really a trompe l'oeil toilet? The thing I was photographing was a trompe l'oeil fireplace next to a real, functioning toilet.
I will use Magritte's argument to say that my page is correctly titled. The toilet was a real toilet, yes. But this page is not a real toilet, it a collection of pictures of one!
Of course, you can argue that all my pages are nothing but pictures of toilets, and therefore they are all trompe l'oeil toilets. But then this page would contain a picture of a picture of a fireplace, and I'm not sure what to call double trompe-l'oeilism. But for a clear case of double trompe-l'oeil, look just below!
Also see the British Toilets page.
Why is this man photographing the alcove leading to the museum's toilets?
Influential pundit Stephen Colbert graciously donated a portrait of himself to the National Portait Gallery in Washington DC.
The portrait shows him standing in front of a fireplace, over which is a portrait showing him standing in front of a fireplace, over which is a portrait of him. Double trompe-l'oeil!
Portraits of Presidents: straight ahead.
Portraits of pundits with failed (so far) Presidential
bids: to the right, in the alcove.
And for the relevance on this page: It was hung in an alcove, above the water fountain and between the doors to the men's and women's restrooms.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. [....] Poor sanitation, bad hygiene, and unsafe water — usually unsafe because it has fecal particles in it — cause one in ten of the world's illnesses. [....] Diarrhea — nearly 90 percent of which is caused by fecally contaminated food or water — kills a child every fifteen seconds. The number of children who have died from diarrhea in the last decade [1998-2008] exceeds the total number of people killed by armed conflict since the Second World War.
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
