Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition

Cubism and the Trompe l'Oeil Tradition was a major exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, during 2022–2023. The show brought together a remarkable range of works to examine the deep and often overlooked connections between the revolutionary Cubist movement and the long-standing European tradition of trompe l'oeil — the art of visual deception.

By placing Cubist paintings and collages in dialogue with earlier still lifes and illusionistic works, the exhibition challenged visitors to reconsider how artists across centuries have questioned the nature of representation, surface, and reality. The show demonstrated that far from being a radical break with the past, Cubism was in many ways a sophisticated continuation of — and conversation with — a tradition of pictorial wit and visual trickery stretching back to antiquity.