Universal Principles of Art

98 TROMPE L’OEIL

DECEPTION AS ART

Trompe l’oeil is the attempt to deceive the viewer’s eye into believing that a representation is actually the thing itself. This ambition for perfect imitation goes back to Greek art. Aristotle, in The Poetics, writes, “The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.” In his Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder tells the tale of a contest between two Greek painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes with such verisimilitude that birds swooped down in an attempt to ...