About
Trompe-l’œil is an optical illusion created in visual arts to make 2-dimensional works appear 3-dimensional, bearing many similararties to forced perspective.
Origin
Optical illusions involving 3-dimensional perspectives were used in ancient Greek and Roman times, typically in mural paintings. During the Renaissance period, many Italian painters employed perspective illusion techniques in ceiling paintings. The phrase “trompe l’oeil” was coined in the Baroque period when perspective illusion ceiling paintings grew in popularity in Belgium and the Netherlands.[1]
Spread
Many tropes used in cartoons have employed trompe-l’oeil, like the Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote using paint to create a 3-dimensional tunnel on a cliff face (shown below, left). In the 1954 musical film Singin’ in the Rain, a scene featuring the character Cosmo Brown (played by Donald O-Connor) running up a wall features a trompe-l’oeil mural (shown below, right).
In August 2005, graffiti artist Banksy painted a series of images on the Palestinian side of the Israeli West Bank wall, which included a trompe-l’oeil painting of two children playing below a hole in the wall revealing a tropical beach (shown below).
Forced Perspective
The forced perspective photography technique creates an optical illusion by strategically placing a subject or object to appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. While the technique has been employed by various professional photographers and artists for many decades, it became a widespread practice among amateur photographers in the early 2000s with the emergence of inexpensive digital cameras and photo-sharing platforms like Flickr.
