trompe l'oeil

1. A style of painting that gives an illusion of photographic reality.
2. A painting or effect created in this style.

[French trompe l'œil : trompe, third person sing. present tense of tromper, to deceive + le, the + œil, eye.]

New York Times columnist David Brooks says that when it comes to tattoos, there is less to them than meets the eye. They offer the illusion — the trompe l'oeil (which is French for deceiving the eye) — of nonconformism, but really they are just the opposite:

"What you get is a culture of trompe l'oeil degeneracy. People adopt socially acceptable transgressions — like tattoos — to show they are edgy, but inside they are still middle class.... Another generation of hipsters, laid low by the ironies of consumerism."

Link: Nonconformity Is Skin Deep - New York Times

Posted August 27, 2006.

See our Word Overheard blog to see interesting uses of strange words.

For more information on trompe l'oeil, visit Britannica.com.

Ceiling and wall paintings that deceive the eye, creating the illusion of three dimensions.

Mary Jo Salter 2003

Mary Jo Salter's poem "Trompe l'Oeil," which provided the title for her 2003 collection Open Shutters, describes an artistic style found in Genoa, Italy, and throughout Europe: that of painting realistic murals on the outside walls of houses and buildings, so real that people passing by are fooled, at least briefly, into mistaking the painted images for the things they represent. Salter uses this particular style of painting to spark a meditation on the nature of reality and the arts in general, finding insincerity in both the fake shutters that stand beside a real window and the French word "oeil" itself, which can be considered deceptive or a lie because it presents a final "l" to the eye but not to the ear (it is not pronounced the way it is spelled if one assumes each letter stands for a specific sound).

This poem is representative of Salter's work as it has evolved over the course of five books of poetry in the past two decades. The two subjects — painting and foreign travel — are typical in Salter's writing. Stylistically, the poem shows the deft control of rhyme, off-rhyme, and rhythm that readers have come to expect of her words. Salter's technical elegance is balanced with a light sense of humor that makes the most of ordinary ironies, such as the contrast between laundry piled up inside the house and imitation clothes hung to dry on a painted clothesline on the wall outside. The poem manages, in just a few lines, to treat readers to a new way of looking at the world and of looking at how artists depict the reality that others simply experience.