Who's Fakin' It? Not Eye.

Before and After from Top to Bottom. See item 5 for links to Eric Grohe's transformative murals.

UPDATE: Thanks, apostropher, for linking and highlighting to a bigger crowd the coolness of Grohe.

Although I have always admired trompe l'oeil, contrary to my memory, Blogger search says I haven't posted on it. To fix my insufficiency and provide the eye candy:

1) If you haven't seen this sidewalk art bouncing round the blogosphere over the last couple days, here's the fun, poppy work of Julian Beever via Impact Lab who labels it 3D Art to make the idea seem brand new, I guess.

2) Because she's an art history gal, Martha of Your Daily Art, isn't be fooled by any new-fangled name for a tradition dating back to the Greek and Romans. Recently, she posted William Harnett's work from 1888, titled Mr. Hulings' Picture Rack.

3) Another 19th century pictorial pretender was John Frederick Peto.

4) It looks like the Italy's Pictor Academy teaches three-year studies in the form. Going down the list of students, clicking on the starry bombs next to the names reveals examples. There are traditional and even funny ones including monsters or cartoon ghosts. Of course, including too much that looks frozen or caricatured can blow the effect. One I think particularly nice is by Teresa Figliola, mostly because the landscape beyond the arches is well done. (I'm guessing it was misfiled since it's the last bomb next to Claudia De Figueiredo's name. How administrative ineptitude foils greatness.) My all-around favorite was Cristina Longo's half-open, wooden window.

5) Another great artist who I've been meaning to highlight works in enormous scale. Eric Grohe reconceives entire facades of multi-story buildings with incredible skill and detail. His whole gallery is nice to browse, and his style has the monumental, Americana feel of a State or even World's Fair installation. In the project above, he actually had 80 local citizens pose for the smaller human figures within this promenade. And check out the permanently sun-soaked revelry now happening in this Ohio alley.

Now, I've got genuine chapter editing to do and a couple of reviews to write. My own fraud is posturing like I'm creating a lot of original content, when I'm just crosslinking like a mad thing. Expect more short-shrift posts with links to my other articles in the days to come. Gotcha!