Which is Which?

Chalfant pasted a U.S. stamp onto canvas and placed next to it a hand-painted double, with identical sawtooth edges and paper-thin relief. The hastily cut-and-pasted newspaper account of the artist’s sleight of hand challenges the viewer to discern the real four-cent proxy from the impostor. Though one stamp appears abraded—evidence, perhaps, of attempts to verify “which is which” by touch—the real rub lies with the press clipping, a fictitious piece of paper and reporting. The insertion of actual printed matter, the stamp, was a one-off until the advent of Cubism, but the American proffered two other conceits as well: faux collage and fake news. Though well publicized in the United States, the works of the American trompe l’oeil artists were likely unknown to the Cubists.