ABSTRACT
Over the past decade art and architecture have been transformed from producers of illusions into receptacles for illusions. They have ceased contemplating and representing the experienced and visible world, preferring to become themselves objects of admiration and portrayal. There has been a role inversion, and instead of revealing and clarifying spaces and images, thereby acting as tools of mediation with reality, art and architecture now seek to be depicted and thus “seen.” They concentrate all attention on their appearance and superficiality and are translated into a cultural phenomenon whose reality remains hidden behind the “theatrical,” the end result being art and architecture as backdrop and facade.1
