Understanding Photorealism

• Photorealism, also known as Superrealism, Hyperrealism, or Illusionism, began in the late 1960s.

Background

• Photorealism extended Pop Art by making it more figurative, appealing, and accessible.
• Malcolm Morley is said to have founded the movement.
• It was a reaction against non-figurative abstraction like Abstract Expressionism.
• It aimed to revive technical skill and precision in art.
• It sought to make art attractive and accessible to a broader audience and increase the art market.
• Unlike Pop Art, which could be costly and exclusive, Photorealists aimed to produce art that people would want to buy, benefitting art dealers and collectors.

Aims

• Reintroduce technical skill to painting.
• Make art appealing and accessible to a wider audience.
• Create convincingly real images on a 2-D surface, showcasing the artist's technical skill.

Characteristics

• Photorealism further extended Pop Art, particularly the work of artists like Hockney and Blake.
• Similarities with Pop Art include figurative, recognizable subjects, mass appeal, focus on contemporary American life (adverts, shops, streets, etc.), and offering a representational, naturalistic alternative to abstract movements.
• Other characteristics include creating highly accurate, illusionistic images (e.g., Close's portraits that are larger than life).
• Use of very detailed and technically refined techniques (e.g., Este's city scenes).
• Photorealism is based on photographic sources, the photos are reproduced so accurately that they are sometimes mistaken for reality (Trompe l'oeil).
• Very large canvases are used, which can make the work disturbing when confronted.
• An airbrush was often used to add detail and color to paintings.
• Artists sometimes turned images upside down to accurately record the subject.
• The approach was unemotional and impersonal, They preferred to concentrate on technical perfection, rather than promoting an individual style.
• They focus on small areas of the canvas, concentrating on accurate reproduction rather than on the entire canvas as a unit.

The Artists

• Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Audrey Flack, and Duane Hanson were well-known Photorealists.
• Chuck Close was known for his huge portraits.
• Richard Estes focused on deserted street and city scenes with reflective shop windows.
• Ralph Goings is known for paintings of cars and other vehicles, typically in rural settings.
• Audrey Flack painted cluttered still-lives with symbolic associations.
• Duane Hanson created life-like fiberglass sculptures.

Chuck Close

• Chuck Close was born on July 5, 1940, in Monroe, Washington, and he found solace in art due to his severe dyslexia.
• Close started his career as an Abstract Expressionist and sought to control work through systems based on photography and technical precision.
• In 1988, Close experienced a severe health issue, leading to paralysis, but continued to paint with a brush taped to his wrist in a more abstract style after physical therapy.
• His early work was intimate and up-front, replicating details of selected faces, as Close suffers from prosopagnosia (face-blindness).
• Close's techniques blurred the lines between painting and photography, and his color application aided the development of the inkjet printer.

Chuck Close: Subject Matter

• Chuck Close is best known for his massive portraits which he painted from photographs
• He chooses to depict ordinary, everyday people he often uses friends as models.
• He is more interested in detail (skin, pores, hair etc) than in people and tends to ignore the backgrounds and keeps clothing to a minimum.
• His paintings are full front, close-up and on a huge billboard scale and although these are paintings of people, they have no personality, and have become technical studies.

Chuck Close: Technique

• In his early work Close limited himself to monochromatic paintings and only used a few spoons of pigment for a huge canvas, eventually introducing color.
• He paints on an exceptionally large scale directly working from photographs.
• He uses an airbrush to include every detail, resulting in highly refined works with a slick, mechanical finish.
• The works reflect his interest in the reflex camera.
• Close usually transferred his photographs onto the canvas using a grid, His portraits are full front and close up, sometimes even of billboard size.
• The compositions are claustrophobic with little space surrounding the figures and no real background.
• All works have a 'frozen' quality.

Specific Chuck Close Works: "Linda"

• The portrait stares directly at the viewer in an unemotional way and Close is concerned with technical accuracy over individuality.
• Attention is dedicated to every detail, and the figure has no environment or context, so viewers gain no clues to background, character, identity, or history.

Specific Chuck Close Works: "Susan" (1972, 2.5m x 2.2m)

• Close analyzed every detail of Susan's face and the work is devoid of emotion or personality.
• The portrait confronts the viewer and has many of the characteristics typical of Photorealism.

Recent Work by Close

• Newer huge paintings are divided into small squares (a grid) with each block painted separately, usually with small circles of color.
• The result gives is a giant, detailed mosiac which is unclear up close but becomes clear at a distance.
• A similar work to this technique is on view at the Jhb Art Gallery Example "Kiki" (1993).

Richard Estes

• Richard Estes focused on contemporary American scenes, generally architecture with reflections and seldom included people.

Richard Estes: Technique

• Estes would project color transparencies onto the canvas as a color slide that helps him create a painting that is more complex and detailed.
• He uses bristle brushes, creating a very organized structural image that are very detailed, adding details to heightened reality.
• Estes is known for sharper and richer intense colors, including geometric structure compositions.
• Estes used reflections to show the outside world and not what is what's inside with precision mathematical like detail.
• Estes work is said to be a "hideous" labeld by Estes himself that describes it as disturbing and tiring with vacuums of inhabitants and life.

Audrey Flack

• Flack was the first painter to create an acknowledged Photorealist painting

Audrey Flack: Subject Matter

• Flack's works have emotional and psychological context that can come off as subjective and unrealistic with symbolic associations from time period elements.
• Her paintings are crowded, claustrophobic still-lives which have compressed, even distorted space that are vanitas from 17th century.
• Some things described in her paintings suggest greed or vanity.

Audrey Flack: Technique and Example, "Wheel of Fortune"

• Flack arranges her still lives, and then takes photos of them; she includesshiny objects in the images, that seem shinier and smoothers than real life.
• Her tool of choice is the airbrush which super highlights reality with objects like a skullmirror, calendar, jewellery, photograph, fruit, dice.
• The symbolism is a mixture of Overt and personalized objects with everything equally emphasized to life like like for making it more real.

Specific Audrey Flack Works: World War II (Vanitas)

• Flack addresses memory, the Holocaust and the friability of life and places objects around a photograph of Buchenwald camp liberation from Margaret Bourke White.
• The items are meant to represent impermanence and they are meant to bridge the gap between events and remember Jewish culture.

Ralph Goings

• Goings favored scenery, with some vehicles and food places.
• His main subject would be middle rural class Americana.

Ralph Goings: Technique

• Goings main focus was gloss, along with detailing by using the airbrush.

Sculpture Duane Hanson

• Duane Hanson is the sculptor most attributed to photorealism whose known for human scaled sculptures that fit in to contemporary settings.
• Hanson creates an environment of realness and ambiguity in his pieces by using figure that are life sized, figures that are very exceptional at representing people so life like.
• Real clothing items are added to each sculpture to give it the real touch. In terms of technique he used direct body casts that is polyester that's reinforced with fiber glass.

Differences between the work of Segal versus and Hanson

• George Segal used full white sculpture for real items, and would make his sculptures integrate inside the piece.
• Hanson would use full colored figures with clothing items for the final real style.
• Hanson is typical of Photorealism as he highlights technical expertise and accurate reproduction more than insight or mood.