Emily Martin

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Anderson, Kim

Keywords

trompe l'oeil, Painting, Still Life, Art, Baudrillard

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

In trompe l'oeil painting, the meticulous, ritualistic reproduction of ordinary objects results in both metaphysical and formal problems, which I examine in various ways in "Nothing is Real. Everything is True." The tradition of trompe l'oeil, whose strictest form originates from seventeenth-century Netherlands, intentionally lacks narrative, pictorial depth, and temporal relativity. The exact replication of the object(s) causes a tension between the figurative and literal interpretations of the painting, creating the potential reading of the painting as a treatise on representation, perspective, and the principles of reality. This work is further situated within the theoretical framework of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes, and Hanneke Grootenboer. When confronting these vestiges of the everyday, the viewer must contemplate, meditate, and observe precisely what is being exhibited, and in turn succumb to the acute, negative pleasure created by the intense sensation of deja vu.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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