Use Of Trompe Veil In The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Though Calle speculated about the meaning behind the man’s comings and goings, her documentation was obtained from observation and was limited to what had in fact happened. Also, the man being followed was never approached to clarify his intentions during his trip. Thereby, all the evidence compiled by the artist merely contours the facts, it lacks depth, it carries no meaning to use Baudrillard’s words. This is then, another way in which recreation can transform reality. Suggesting that even faithful and extensive archives of the past will be left with empty spaces that can be used to transform facts into fiction.
In Baudrillard’s essay about Calle’s work, there is a quote which was mentioned by Plesset during her interview with Taylor. The
trompe l’oeil has been widely used by many artists with the objective of creating an illusion and distorting the viewers’ understanding of what is fact and what is fiction (Taylor, 2015). There is an early example of this painting technique usage in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where frescoes recovered from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistorat at Boscoreale, an area north of Pompeii, are exhibited. These wall paintings, dated somewhere between the 40–30 B.C, use various trompe l’oeil devices to simulate objects and architectural details which in reality aren’t there (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004). Then, the purpose of the illusion was purely ornamental. Trompe l’oeil was used only as a way of decorating walls in a clever way to impress guests and show the fine taste of the villa’s
This may also be due to the fundamental need of contemporary art to question what has been accepted as correct or true. Lately, art is turning more and more into a tool to challenge dogmas and spark debate, and the deception born from trompe l’oeil is an effective way of shaking certainties. The creation of an illusion through painting, mines the viewer’s confidence on his ability to distinguish fact from fiction, and when the observer is fooled into believing real something which isn’t there, he starts to question his perception of art and nature (Johnson, 2005). Sight is one of the senses that allows humans to perceive the world around them and it carries a lot of importance in what many people understand as real. Then, fooling the eye, convincing it of the existence of absent objects, is an effective method to create doubt and raise questions about truth and thus other concepts or ideas related to an artwork.
Trompe l’oeil had moved through time from a playful illusionistic painting technique to a tool to shake convictions, raining awareness of issues and inducing the viewer to reflect on them. That is exactly the intent behind artist Anna Plesset’s use of the trompe l’oeil in her installation work ‘Still Life’. Said installation was shown in New York in the Gallery ‘Untitled?’ on 2013. The works are born after a residency de artist did in Giverny on 2011, during which she settled in