Look(ing) can be Deceiving

The casual visitor to the exhibition “Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting” at the National Gallery of Art can be forgiven for missing one of the show’s crucial moments - and central experiences - in the very first room. Perhaps still adjusting to coming in from the cold, maybe deciding whether or not to rent the audio tour, and almost certainly orienting one’s self to the show’s premise by reading the introductory text panels and scrutinizing some ancient, and fascinating, mosaics from Pompeii, the average museumgoer may miss the most significant work in the room. Many do. Fortunately the guards in that first gallery get the trick, love the trick, and love to watch visitor’s reactions to the trick, so you probably will be directed to what you missed, where you can experience your own moment of disbelief, followed by delight and wonder at the artist’s ability to fool your eye.

This experience is central to art known as trompe l-oeil (which means to fool or trick the eye). By slipping in this object, unannounced, the curators and designers of this exhibition have done the public a real favor. Before plunging in to the at times overly didactic exhibition that follows, visitors to “Deceptions and Illusions” can experience the raw, untutored power of illusionistic art, and have some sense of exactly what trompe l’oeil art is about. As the exhibition wall text states:

The term describes paintings both witty and serious that imitate natural appearances so convincingly that viewers momentarily mistake the objects depicted for the real thing. The moment of deception, however, is brief. Uncertainty over what is real and what is illusion is soon replaced by amusement at having been tricked and admiration for the artist's ingenuity and skill.

The term trompe l’oeil is not particularly old. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (online version), the phrase was coined by an art historian in 1889 who disparaged the trickery of intentionally deceptive images and objects, favoring high-minded art. However, while there are objects in this show that are not particularly impressive as either trompe l’oeil or art, there are many more works that fascinate as both illusion and high art, even more so for their underlying conceptual richness.

For instance, a painting by Titian, in one of the first galleries, is a portrait of a Pope. Over this portrait the artist painted a diaphanous white curtain that covers about half of the painting. Although no one would ever mistake the loose, bravura brushwork in this curtain for some gauzy textile hanging over a painting, the concept still works. Titian depicted the edge of the curtain just over the right eye of the sitter. The artist plays on your desire to better apprehend the sitter’s personality, and it is when your annoyance at the obscuring curtain crests that Titian has you. While your senses immediately register the great master’s distinctive brushwork across the surface of the canvas, the underlying conceptual trick – disclosing only a portion of the sitter’s face and eye – still prompts the desired reaction.

Another rich and rewarding work is “Ghost Clock” by the contemporary sculptor Wendell Castle. Set apart in its own generous niche-like space just off of the thesis-derived arrangement in this exhibition, this truly wondrous work is a marvel to virtually all who see it. Purporting to represent a grandfather clock, part of which has been draped in white cloth, this sculpture is actually carved from one solid piece of mahogany wood that has been partially bleached. Even knowing the ruse, one nonetheless marvels at the ingenuity and craftsmanship the artist brings to this work.

There are many other fascinating moments, when one operates between suspended disbelief and appreciation of the artist’s wit. Is that a chalkboard on the wall, with chalk suspended from a string and the markings of previous note writers, or is it a painting of a chalkboard? Why is perfectly good money pasted on a panel? Do people really still use letter racks? Even though one will know intellectually that these objects and many others like them are fictions conjured in paint, the visual effects and the conceptual boldness evident in many of these works are so stunning that one will find oneself continually intrigued to see what artists could think of next.

The exhibition draws on art created during the Renaissance, when artists rediscovered a fascination with illusionistic art, and includes works by some of the most ingenious painters in later centuries, including those Dutch and Flemish baroque masters so justly celebrated in all the leading European courts of the day and American nineteenth-century still life artists whose witty visual tricks rival even those by their northern European forebears. By including works by modern and contemporary artists, moreover, the curators give a good idea of how the concerns of modernism have effectively recast the underlying theoretical construct of trompe l’oeil, especially its assumptions about the nature of reality. In this regard, visitors will have a good chuckle at a work titled “Duchamp’s Meal” in the last gallery.

The initial fascination with illusionistic painting derived from a desire by Renaissance artists to emulate the ancient painters of Greece and Rome; hence the mosaics from Pompeii in the exhibition’s antechamber. Drawing on recently rediscovered historical narratives by ancient writers, these artists and their biographers soon integrated the stories of these ancient artists into art theory and criticism as tropes that modeled the most perfect characteristics of the ideal artist.

Indeed the first few galleries of this show are divided thematically into the archetypes discussed in ancient literature, such as Zeuxis’s grapes and Parrhasios’s curtain (the one deceived nature – a bird – by painting grapes, while the other deceived his fellow artist – man – by painting a curtain over those grapes) as well as Giotto’s fly (legend has it that the young Giotto fooled his teacher, Cimabue, by painting a fly that seemed to have landed on the master’s painting – Zeuxis/Parrhasios redux).

Sadly, this portion of the show suffers somewhat from didactic overkill. Instead of one well-chosen illusionistic painting of a bunch of grapes, we see about six. Instead of one dead bird hanging on a nail, we see a seemingly endless array. Further, the very nature of museum installation practice – a serial hang of pictures on a wall – works against the independence of both space and type necessary for a trompe l’oeil object to work.

Still, the show has its moments, particularly on the second floor, where the pacing of the show is more eclectic and rewarding. The designers had a great deal of fun in these galleries creating optimal viewing environments for select works, and the curators included some surprises along the way that will keep the visitor both guessing and delighted.

Even though many of the paintings in this exhibition do not so thoroughly convince as they might in another, more discrete space, they are nonetheless fascinating to behold and well worth your attentive gaze.

“Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting” runs through March 2^nd in the East Building of the National Gallery, Mezzanine Level. Admission, as always, is free. The museum is open daily from 10-5 pm; Sundays 11-6. An audio tour is available for $5 and, in the absence of the normally ubiquitous gallery brochure for special exhibitions, may be worth the investment. The show was guest curated by Sybille Eberhard-Schiffer, with contributions from Franklin Kelly and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr, respectively Senior Curator of British and American Paintings and Curator of Northern Baroque Painting at the National Gallery of Art. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the National Endowment for the Humanities.