Willem Robart

A few sheets of paper lie scattered on a marble tabletop. While seemingly casual, the sheets were very deliberately chosen: each stands in for a different type of printed object. Willem Robart’s portraits of these pages are so accurate that the specific editions of the publications they came from can be identified. His astonishing meticulousness in reproducing images belongs to the tradition of trompe l’oeil (trick the eye). A competition between media underlies this genre, for by approaching the qualities of print so faithfully, the artist reasserts his belief in the versatility of drawing.