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These stipulations suggest that two types of space are likely to be typical of trompe l‟œil paintings. On the one hand, the viewing distance will be proximal, the pictorial space will be shallow and depicted items will be relatively flat or in some other way eclipse the cues of parallax that signal depth and volume. The best examples of this kind are to be found in the seventeenth-century Northern tradition, as this quodlibet by Cornelis Gijbrechts shows (fig. 22).108 In this vivid illusion we see notelets and various other items such as a quill and an hourglass fastened to a canvas with a network of ribbons. Either aligned with the support or at right angles to it (thus with their edges parallel to our line of sight), the paper scraps give us little reason to believe that a shift in position would substantially alter their appearance if this were an arrangement seen in real life. But this is not to say that they look completely flat to the surface; instead, their folds and the shadows they cast seem to project them forward into our space, and the same can be said of the curtain which pays tribute to the story of Parrhasios and Zeuxis. However, it is at the site where we normally suspend our judgement in order to enter the space of the artwork that the trompe l‟œil artist plays some of his most

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The term „quodlibet‟ (literally translating from Latin as „whatever pleases‟) is defined in James Stevens Curl‟s Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture as a „Fanciful type of trompe l'œil of oddments, often showing letters, paper-knives, playing-cards, ribbons, and scissors, in apparently accidental array, painted on walls, etc.‟ 2nd

ed (Oxford University Press), p. 880.

powerful cards. For while he does in fact renounce the frame, he does not make us think that he does by substituting it for one that is illusionistically painted. In this way, the powerful depth cue of occlusion is brought into play,109 making it look as if the objects pinned to the board and the curtains overlap with – and are thus situated in front of – the frame.

In the second type of trompe l‟œil space, the image will be at a far remove from the viewer and on a monumental scale or the scene itself will be represented as distant so that in neither case will the cues of parallax be conspicuously absent. This allows devices such as vanishing point perspective and foreshortening to give the semblance of depth without shifts in position giving the game away. These latter strategies are used to greatest effect in the illusionistic ceilings and wall paintings of the Italian Baroque, such as Andrea Pozzo‟s monumental ceiling fresco in the church of Sant‟Ignazio in Rome (fig. 23). Pozzo‟s work depicts Christ flanked by a swirl of celestial bodies beckoning to the figure of Saint Ignatius as he ascends on a cloud. Viewed from the correct position (which is indicted by a mark on the floor) the depicted architecture appears to mesh with the church‟s real structure, thrusting it upwards by a further two elevations. Coupled with the centrifugal movement of the bodies, this vertical propulsion creates a kind of „plughole perspective‟ which has no point of stability or definite closure. No vanishing point is indicated since the vertiginous plunge of the architecture opens directly out onto the sky, while this is blocked at its very nodal point – the implied point of convergence – by the figure of Christ. Since the space therefore remains forever unsealed, the viewer is

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Occlusion is the cue whereby a nearer object overlaps and thus partially hides one that is behind it.

made to feel weightless and disembodied as if gravity were counteracted by the lift of ascension, sucking us out of our physical flesh.

Each mode of trompe l‟œil therefore seems to structure a distinct experience of space. On the one hand, the former might be said to evoke a proximal space suited to manual activity by appearing to place objects within reach of our hands. Conversely, the illusion of confronting infinite space can only serve to disembody the viewer for it dislocates – that is, it literally interferes with the ability to locate – objects with respect to the body. The perceptual effect of this is therefore one of disorientation and decentring – and perhaps, by implication, of oceanic feeling or dedifferentiation – which thus lends it well to religious or spiritual themes.110

Therefore, in light of the sensations which Cubism is said to evoke, it seems to be most closely related to the mode of trompe l‟œil which aims at the proximal encounter – the effect of the quodlibet, or (presumably) of Parrhasios‟s picture. In this respect, it is no coincidence that both of these styles tend to favour still life, for this genre treats objects that are eminently familiar and manipulable and thus can be easily related to our experience of touch. If we set aside the later concerns of collage, this overlap in subject matter is most apparent in Analytic Cubism. For this is not only the moment when Picasso and Braque turn their attention to still life, but also the time when the typical objects of the quodlibet – such as nails, curtains, picture frames and playing cards – enter their work. To illustrate this point we might usefully compare Gijbrechts‟s trompe

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I shall return to these ideas in the conclusion. The term „oceanic feeling‟ was popularised by Freud in his 1930 work Civilisation and its Discontents, however, my use of this word is not intended to have any psychoanalytic connotations.

l‟œil with Braque‟s Violin and Palette of 1909 (fig. 24). In Braque‟s picture, for example, a curtain similarly sweeps across to the right, pages of sheet music echo the flat frontality of the notelets and an illusionistic nail suspends a palette from the wall, just as scissors pin back the curtain in Gijbrechts‟s work. What is more, since the front face of the violin is aligned to the same plane as the palette and the score, it seems that Braque articulates a similarly shallow, „notice board‟ like space. And indeed, contemporary photographs indicate that the artists was seeking this kind of effect since he often arranged objects in this fashion on his studio walls (fig. 25).

But if our response to such pictures is to imagine them as zones of potential activity, surely this loose correlation of space and subject is not sufficient to justify such a close similarity in their phenomenological mode. Many pictures depict objects that we might want to touch or have touched many times over and indeed, many present them as close at hand, but this does not mean that they evoke tactility in the same direct way. For example, while Gris‟s

Fruit Dish and Glass (Still Life with Lemons) of 1923 (fig. 26) checks the appropriate boxes – plump grapes and waxy lemons might be thought of as eminently palpable, a glass might be considered eminently graspable and all are presented within a shallow, tilted up space – this work does not seem to possess the same magnetic draw for our hands. But neither can the similar effect of Gijbrechts‟s and Braque‟s compositions be attributed to a more specific overlap of spatial organisation or style. Braque‟s Cubist space – despite its loose correspondence – is fractured and ambiguous in ways that make it a far cry from the vivid illusionism of Gijbrechts‟s trompe l‟œil.