This paper will explore the legacy of Abstract Illusionism, a style in which abstract paintings are rendered with a sense of perspective, depth and shadow, and defined by their paradoxical flatness and illusory non-flatness. Diverging from trompe l’oeil which assumes the picture plane as a "fixed point of departure", Abstract Illusionism utilises geometric/optical illusion in such a way so as to deny the picture plane entirely.1This was achievable through the development of various painterly techniques including the airbrushed shadow which '‘allowed the image to take up imaginary space and even float [discretely] in frontof the canvas’': ‘'what should have been purely abstract now seemed tangible.'’2  At the time, Louis Meisel summarized that ‘'[t]he eye and the mind have no real or previously experienced object to help analyse what is being seen'',and yet it can be argued that this very relationship between surface and space pre-empts the super-smooth yet seemingly deep and tactile dimension of the computer screen.3. This intuition can be given strong endorsement in Clement Greenberg’s essay “Byzantine Parallels,” in which he had described a new kind of luminousness which, like Byzantine gold and mosaic, ''comes forward to fill the space between itself and the spectator with its radiance.'’4

 

Most importantly for this paper are the contemporary painters who are complicating the binary of Abstract Illusionism (flat/not-flat) through the addition of multiple planes (figural, abstract, narrative, photographic, decorative) and by locating and respecting the contemporary resurgence of trompe l'oeil and the rise of digital skeuomorphism; further deceiving the viewer about the nature of texture or space. In this way, painting is no longer operating dialectically but working in multiple, simultaneous dimensions that are both deceptive and imaginary. This new type of illusionism may well be the single common denominator linking the most interesting painting being done today (including works by Josh Reames, Stephanie Hier, Laura Owens, Oli Epp, Brandon Lipchick, Benjamin Cook, and Allison Zuckermann). This shift in dimensional paradigms contributes to the palpable change in our consideration of the creation of paintings, since ''[i]t is no longer the sovereign painter-subject who pulls the strings. Instead a widely distributed individual, who surfaces at the nodes, edges, and meshes of the network, intensifies and differentiates herself from it.’'5  

 

 1 Cassidy Garhart Velasquez, “Abstract Illusionism: Taking Realism out of Illusion”, (Colorado: Colorado State University, 2007), 4

 2 Ibid., 4.

 3 Julie Sasse, James Havard, (New York & Manchester: Hudson Hills Press, 2006), 15.

 4 Clement Greenberg, “Byzantine Parallels” [1958], Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 167-170, 169.

 5 Kerstin Stakemeier, “Controlled Medium Specificity: Networks and Painting”, in Manuela Ammer, Achim Hochdörfer, and David Joselit (eds.), Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age (Munich; London; New York: Prestel, 2016), pp. 262-267, 264.