Artworks that appear incredibly realistic about the extent that they deceive the eye. (“Deceive the eye” is the literal translation of trompe l’oeil, a French term used to refer to these kinds of works.) Since the early Greeks, extreme realism has been an aspiration of Western art, but with the rise and popularity of abstract painting in the 20th century, this kind of aspiration became avant-garde. At the same period, the late 1960s and ’70s saw the prevalence of highly-realistic paintings based on photography (what is called Photorealism) and contemporary art had witnessed the prevalence of sculptures that attempt to exactly replicate, or “re-create”, objects.
