Hyperreal. The art of trompe-l'oeil

As all the authors in this catalogue remind us, we owe to Pliny the Elder the founding fable of trompe-l'oeil or trompe l'oeil, featuring the Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis paints grapes so real that birds come to peck at them; Parrhasius, on the other hand, surpasses him by painting a curtain that deceives Zeuxis himself. This anecdote expresses very well the duality of pictorial illusionism. Zeuxis turns us into simple creatures like birds, returning us to a naive attitude of childlike wonder. Parrasio, on the other hand, represents the reflective, almost philosophical dimension of trompe l'oeil, because he highlights the fictional nature of painting. This is the meta-pictorial potential of trompe-l'oeil, which was of such interest in the Baroque period and which once again intrigued the masters of the 20th century, from Picasso and Braque to Magritte and Dalí and many others.

This publication reveals all the registers of illusionism, from the simple still life to the most complex games with the frame and the window, the niche and the cupboard, the curtain, the quodlibet, the grisaille. No lesser is the diversity of the deception: there are simulations of form, relief and texture, simulations of marble and worn wood, of folded paper and folds of drapery. The exhibition covers a wide historical arc, from the Renaissance to the present day, but always mixing times, combining ancient, modern and contemporary works, because in trompe l'oeil there is always something that transcends time and returns identical but different each time.

Publisher: Colección-thyssen Bornemisza Foundation