Sharjah24 – AFP: Ahead of the 50th anniversary of artist Pablo Picasso's death, The Metropolitan Museum (MM) of Art in New York unveils a new exhibit placing his cubist works in the old tradition of trompe l’oeil, the technique of making objects on a two-dimensional surface look three-dimensional.

"The way (Picasso) is playing with us in representation is part of this longer centuries-old tradition," co-curator of the exhibit 'Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition' Emily Braun says.

The co-curator of the exhibition 'Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition' said, "We've never seen his (Pablo Picasso, ed) work in this way before. We've never understood his dialogue. Often we've seen exhibitions on Picasso and Cézanne, Picasso and Goya, Picasso and the Spanish tradition, even Picasso and still life, but not Picasso and Trompe l'Oeil, and the way that many of his humorous, intelligent and whimsical devices, the way he's playing with us in representation is part of this longer centuries-old tradition."

The co-curator of the exhibition 'Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition' added, "And particularly in the collage phase, once they introduced real material artefacts into the picture, like newspaper clippings and trompe-l'oeil wallpapers, that this game of what is real and what is fake, of truth and falsehood and of what is original and what is a copy, all come in to play. It's serious fun."

Emily Braun continued, "In some of the earlier paintings, they are reproducing actual simulacrum of documents, we know that. But they change the dates, they change words, they fiddle with it to give people the message: you better pay attention, you cannot believe what you read and you cannot believe what you see. And that has tremendous relevance to today."