The City is My Canvas

Book excerpt: Contemporary trompe l'oeil artist Richard Haas transforms the drab exteriors of neglected buildings into breath-taking facades. The City Is My Canvas documents his most important projects of the last two decades in lavish double-page spreads which illustrate the "before" and "after" phases of each site. From Italian Quadrata paintings to Baroque and Rococo interiors, trompe l'oeil murals have a long tradition as decoration and didactic illustration. Muralist Richard Haas brings this tradition into the 21st-century as he revitalizes forgotten buildings in eroding city centers by creating new "false" facades that seamlessly blend into the existing environment. "The world is constantly changing, and the needs of the city change with it", says Haas. "Even if blank urban walls at key locations of the city are now primarily seen as opportunities for computer-generated advertisements, whole segments of the mid-range urban American landscape and large areas of our edge cities remain in drastic need of refinement, softening, and improvement".