In this series, the curatorial team presents one work from the Meural art library we find essential. (See all installments.)

It may feel like we’re living in the age of technology, but that’s always been the case. The term itself time travels, changes shape in each new era; before technology came to mean zeroes and ones it meant assembly lines, or the water mill, or concrete. (It may be hard to imagine your life without text messaging, but try imagining it without the wheel.) It’s defined by its novelty, innovativeness, and impact on daily life, but it also tends to redefine what’s artful and entertaining—what passes for cunning even (just look up “uncanny valley” on YouTube).

A great example of this is trompe l’œil, the art of using realism (a certain sort of tech in its own right) to create an optical illusion, making the viewer think the objects in a painting exist in three dimensions. (The phrase translates to “deceive the eye” in French.) But don’t all “realistic” paintings do this? Not quite. Trompe l’œil employs “forced perspective,” hijacking our natural perception of the world by scaling objects and the relations between them. A trompe l’œil painting succeeds by making the viewer ask the question: Still life or real life? Now you might see one such work and say, well I can tell this is a painting—and well done! Of course, like most illusions, it relies on an initial suspension of disbelief by the viewer (like refusing to see the boundaries of the painting).

One of the oldest instances of trompe l’œil involved a competition (like all great art stories seem to do), between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, two of the most renowned artists working in Greece in the 4th century BCE. Each was bent on proving to the other that he was the best painter alive. Zeuxis showed his talent by painting a still life with grapes that were so realistic birds flew down to peck at them. Parhassius was impressed but had a better trick up his sleeve. He asked Zeuxis to visit his studio to judge one of his paintings. When Zeuxis arrived, Parhassius asked him to pull back the curtain. Zeuxis tried and couldn’t; there was no curtain, it was painted on. And so Parhassius was the victor—while Zeuxis tricked a bird, Parhassius tricked a man.

As apocryphal as the story may be, it implies a larger truth: trickery and simulation are all relative to the time they appear. People get used to artifice, just as they do technology. And so when William Harnett revived the technique, in the late 19th century, choosing subjects no one else seemed to have chosen before—such as plucked game, musical instruments, and random leisurely detritus—it caused quite a stir.

It should be mentioned that Harnett’s contemporary John Frederick Peto was at work on similar styles, but received only a modicum of recognition; many of his works were even attributed to Harnett until the 1950s. (Peto is agreed to be slightly less skilled, and perhaps made up for it by taking the technique further down the road—just compare his depiction of a well-worn violin and sheet music to Harnett’s.) Actually, even Harnett had trouble getting respect from art critics and institutions (who saw his work as gimmicky). For much of his life he could only sell his trick-laden works to restaurants, offices, and the like.

This week I chose to feature The Artist’s Letter Rack (1879) because it employs trompe l’œil in remarkably subtle but effective ways. While Harnett occasionally used pronounced shadows to imply depth, the dark behind the bands hardly register at all. The light rectangle of wood implying a card recently moved is effectively done, as is the random geometric drawing on the left. What does it signify? Likely nothing, just as life is full of symbols that never reveal themselves (what Roland Barthes would call the image’s punctum). And then there are the letters, which made me understand how much I fell for the whole trick; I was dying to know what was inside, why the topmost envelope hadn’t been opened, in what mood the recipient was in when he put the rightmost letter back in its blue envelope and posted it here for safekeeping.

Oddly enough, the image reminds me of something incredibly modern—the desktop of my laptop. When I minimize this window I can see the emails I’ve chosen to download and save, I can access the notes I’ve put in the trash, I can open the random doodles I’ve kept for some reason. Even within outdated images of modernity we can find allusions to the present. Surely the modern workspace will be outmoded too. The thought might make you want to reproduce it, and now you can, even better than Harnett. Just take a screenshot.

— Andrew Lipstein, Head of Editorial