Skip to main content

"Hidden" Art Gallery

2012-172-163-pma.jpg

A Deception by Samuel Lewis

This hyperrealistic watercolor and ink drawing is an example of trompe l'oeil ["deceive the eye"] art. A Deception was originally exhibited next to a shadowbox display case of actual papers arranged in a similar way, and the viewer's goal would be to determine which case held the real objects. With this approach, Wendy Bellion argues in her book Citizen Spectator, Samuel Lewis' installation "represented imitation as a problem of visual perception" (172). In other words, based on our fallible faculty of sight alone, authenticity is subjective.

idealcity.jpg

The Ideal City, attributed to Fra Carnevale

This painting's title, The Ideal City, makes it clear that the landscape portrayed is not based in reality. Yet by using perspective to "define the space in terms of the viewer's own angle of vision," it invites them to imagine that they are really seeing it. Joaneath Spicer of the Walters Art Museum explains that, "Set into the woodwork at shoulder height or higher, The Ideal City would have seemed like a window onto another, better world." Unlike A Deception, the aim of the painting is not to confound, but to appeal to hope that a well-governed city like this one could exist.