Creating Grand Illusions

By DANIEL S. LEVY

The ancient Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius vied, according to legend, to see who could produce the most realistic painting. Zeuxis illustrated grapes so lifelike that birds swooped down and tried to eat them. Parrhasius outdid him, however, by fashioning a curtain that Zeuxis, mistaking for fabric, attempted to pull open. A long line of artists have since striven to equal Parrhasius' success by bestowing an illusory third dimension to flat, featureless walls and ceilings. Known as trompe l'oeil (fool the eye), the style reached its prime in the Renaissance and during the Baroque period, when painters embellished churches and palaces with imaginary soaring columns, weighty domes and clouded skies inhabited by plump putti.

Few artists have carried on the tradition in the 20th century, with its predilection for spare, abstract, modernist forms. But of those who have, the worthiest successor to Parrhasius is muralist Richard Haas, 54. "Walls present some of the most interesting and challenging surfaces in an urban area," says Haas. "I look at them as large canvases for an artist to come and paint on."

And so he has. In Miami Beach, Haas transformed the annex of a beachfront hotel into an Art Deco triumphal arch with gargantuan caryatids. In Cincinnati, on the facade of an office building, he simulated a Piranesian cutaway of a coffered Roman temple. His latest creation, on a lobby wall in Boston, is a lyrical evocation of a 19th century crystal pavilion, complete with painted palm trees and an image of tumbling water that blurs into a real fountain.

Growing up in Spring Green, Wis., Haas used to help his great uncle, who was the stonemason at Frank Lloyd Wright's home. He studied painting at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Minnesota, but architectural references kept creeping into his work. After moving to New York City in 1968, he came to public attention with a proposal to paint a series of haunting silhouettes of demolished landmarks on building walls near the historic structures' former sites. In his first actual mural, on an all-but-blank side wall of a cast-iron structure, he painted windows and trim that uncannily duplicated the building's street front. The painting has since become as much of a landmark as its surroundings.

In a functional, no-frills era, Haas boldly mixes styles and allusions, paying tribute to master builders and reviving the richness and variety of earlier ages. Every Haas mural has the flair and comic touch of the Baroque -- art striving for the grand impression. "The real talent is to know how little to do to get a lot," he says. "That is the theatrical effect."