Photorealism

PHOTOREALISM

There has been a love/hate relationship between art and the photograph since the arrival of the camera in the mid 1800’s.  At the time, most artists considered it a threat as it produced an inexpensive new form of reality independent of the artist’s creation, but the world it reproduced gave art a new way of appraising reality.

Archaic forms of the camera had been around almost as long as Western art.  In particular, Johannes Vermeer’s exquisite genre paintings were said to have been painted using a camera obscura, a device that created the visual depth that would later attributed to a camera, only without film.   It was the development of film that took the camera so long to become a threat to artists and not all of them considered it dangerous.  The camera first appeared in Paris at about the same time that the Impressionists first started painting and its new reality affected their artistic vision.

Arrangements and setting became much more informal and the effects of atmospheric light that become so noticeable with a camera were also duplicated.

The rise of Modern art threatened realism, relegating it to a minor role in art in the history of twentieth century art but photography still played had a role as surrealism attempted to used photography to further it’s vision.  But the rise of Abstract Expressionism was the peak of Modern art, as its solemn self-importance became a target for both younger artists and for society in general. The answer to this solemnity was Pop Art that made fun of just about anything it could.

For a time, Pop Art was the great satirical answer to a decades long unraveling of art for its own sake but not everyone found satire as the answer to the previous decades’ artistic explorations.  Among those were a handful of artists who found their answer in the photograph.  The camera and photography had made many major advancements since the days of Impressionism.  High-speed film, strong, clear lenses with high magnification and rich color development all made the camera a valuable tool for realistic painting.

Photorealism reproduced photos usually at a much larger size than the photograph itself.  The reproductive procedures were rather mechanical as the artists traced from slide projections or transferred the image using the centuries old grid method.  Although the artwork itself could look photorealistic, the painting methods were similar to Pop Art, using painting techniques found in the painting of advertisements and hand-lettered signs.

These days, Chuck Close is the best-remembered artist of the group.  His immense portraits, based on photographs taken by Polaroid cameras or 4-for-a-dollar snapshot booths, still are attractions at art museums across the country.  But in his day, the work of Richard Estes and Ralph Goings were very popular.  Both artists painted selected objects of urbanity, including trucks, diners, city life and disposable objects of contemporary society.

Other works of Fine Art you may enjoy:

The Connections Of Mary Cassatt

Bend In the River, an oil painting

Silence In the City, a cityscape painting