Writing on the floor

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For Modernists, trompe l'oeil is edgy beyond acceptability because it seeks to conflate clarity and illusion, materiality and immateriality, real and faux.

Embarrassing stuff for white wall hardliners. You've probably noticed too that in the architectural history books it's always consigned to the novelty department. You think of those Renaissance and Baroque church domes with angels and putti peering over the balcony while some saint or other ascends into the clouds in the clear blue vault of heaven. But what's this? Pavement trompe l'oeil at www.moillusions.com/2006/03/more-3d-sidewalk-drawings.html
<http://www.moillusions.com/2006/03/more-3d-sidewalk-drawings.html>. Not trompe l'oeil at pavement level but on the pavement itself. And as deceiving to the eye as any Mannerist masterpiece though not, perhaps, quite as well drawn. You think of how much dosh Tate Modern could have saved if it had hired one of these sidewalk illusionists to do that big crack in the floor.