Fooling the eye has been a major preoccupation of artists for a couple of millennia, as you argue in your review of “Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe l’Oeil from Antiquity to the Present Day,” and exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (“When It’s Fun to be Fooled,” October 24, 2009). But underlying it is a long quest for imitation, the art’s very purpose according to Arthur Danto, a major art critic and philosopher of art. To simplify a little, he saw the triumph of imitation in photography that ushered Photorealism in art. This spelled “the end of art,” which was long foreseen by Hegel. The long quest for verisimilitude in now over. Which is why trompe l’oeil now strikes us as innocent fun. It is but a twist on imitation, which has reached its end already. As for art, it is now lost in the woods, for anything goes. And nothing much matters any longer.