Cubism, like Trompe l’Oeil painting, with which it is paired in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition”, seems like a magic trick, fooling the viewer’s eye. The magic of Trompe l’Oeil—which is French for “trick of the eye”—rests on the use of deft techniques to create an illusion of reality so real that the eye believes a painting of an object, or group of objects, to be those objects in actuality. The magic of Cubism, on the other hand, lies in its intentional denial of representation at the exact moment when the viewer’s eye expects and looks for it. In other words, where Trompe l’Oeil painting fools the viewer’s eye into a mode where “seeing is believing,” Cubism takes the opposite tack—“now you see it, now you don’t”—exposing the tricks of perspective while replacing them with its own legerdemain.
Despite these differences, with a wide variety of seminal, splendid artworks and a meticulously researched catalogue, “Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition” makes a persuasive argument for Trompe l’Oeil painting as a crucial antecedent of Cubism. What’s more, the
