What Will Appear from Behind the Curtain Today?

A modestly sized trompe l’oeil  (46.5 × 63.9 cm), painted by Adriaen van der Spelt in 1658 and now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, perfectly illustrates just how distrustful we are of the image of our surroundings. Spelt painted a still life with flowers, but did so in a way that invoked the story of the rivalry between the ancient painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius.

The true subject of this painting is a moment of revelation, when ‘true’ nature unveils itself. The feeling that we live in the Matrix, separated from reality not by one curtain but by an infinite number of them, never leaves Homo sapiens. One wonders why.