trompe l'oeil

plural trompe l'oeils · alternative trompe l’œil · alternative trompe-l’oeil · alternative trompe-l’œil

1. uncountableusuallyA genre of painting that exploits human vision to create the illusion that the subject of the painting is real.

   In 2008 they moved to New York, where they made waves at the 2010 Whitney Biennial with their “Fold” paintings, spray-painted canvases that were flat but seemed crumpled, a trompe l’oeil trick that reflected the artist’s enduring preoccupation with interdimensionality.

   2023 March 16, Julia Felsenthal, “An Artist Whose Work Might (Possibly) Have Its Own Free Will”, in The New York Times Style Magazine

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   It looked like a private apartment, and yet it seemed also to be a place of business. It was furnished in decorative style with plastic, trick art objects hanging on the walls, geometrical forms of the trompe l'oeil type that intrigue business people. They are peculiarly vulnerable to art racketeers.

   1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 74

2. countableusuallyA painting of this kind.