PHOTOREALISM:

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE

Nassau County Museum of Art
 THE PHOTOREALIST PERIOD AND MOVEMENT
by Franklin Hill Perrell
Photorealism is an essentially American movement
that hurst upon the art scene suddenly around 1968-69 and
gained considerable recognition during the 1970's.
Sometimes viewed as an extension of Pop Art, because of a
shared interest in the objects or surroundings of popular
culture and everyday experience, the unprecedented char
acter of Photorealism introduced a new look to American
art. While masters of the past, in making their finished
paintings, occasionally had already recourse to photo
graphs as tools in support, or in lieu of, their direct obser
vations, this was the first time that some artists, working at
the same time, deliberately and exhaustively explored ways
of creating paintings, whose primary visual reference was
the photograph. With this in common, these artists, work
ing independently, developed unique procedures to create,
typically in oil or acrylic, images that conveyed the com
plex descriptive information normally associated with the
photograph. As if in a quest for manifest veracity, they
investigated certain unprecedented possibilities in formu
lating their own techniques, not previously taught in any
art programs. Embodying the conduct of Yankee ingenu
ity, they permitted themselves to exploit fully the potential
of the photograph as a resource, but the resulting paintings
themselves were not blown up photographs or achieved by
other chemical or technological means. Every image was
hand done, and by the individual artist rather than by
workshops or ateliers. Public reaction, as is often the case
with new movements, was divided, but to its advocates,
Photorealism was revolutionary.
Typically, the Photorealist movement is interpret
ed as a return to American realist roots, while seen thus also
as a backlash against abstraction. In examining the underly
ing causes for the development of this movement, and its
essential, though varied, characteristics, it became evident
that those two concepts, however defensible, were only part
of the story as together they inadequately conveyed the full
extent of the causes for this novel artistic development.
Whether it is being called Photorealism, hyperreal
ism, super realism, the new realism, or whatever else, it
comprises a yet inadequately comprehended episode in
American art. Its champions primarily focus on the phe
nomenon of its techniques. Another tendency is to identify
Photorealism with traditions of American Realism, partic
ularly its taste for descriptive literalism and trompe l'oeil
effects. To assert the very American-ness of Photorealism is
8
a point beyond dispute. lt is also a fact that those artists
who produced works of Photorealism were engaged in
making paintings that involved long hours of arduous work
and meticulous attention to often near-microscopic detail.
What is so often escaping a reading of this move
ment is the very question of why it is important. If, during
the last twenty five years, a satisfactory explanation were
convincingly established, its status would be even greater. If
that bad been the case, the recent installations at DIA of
the Minimalist group, described by Kimmelman in the
New York Times, as "the greatest generation," would need
fully have been made also about Photorealism, which in
fact comprised the same period as that of Serra, Judd, or
Flavin. The basic intent of the Photorealist movement has
indeed a great deal in common with the Minimalist episode
in American art. While Minimalism's formal properties
imply Photorealism's antithesis, yet the concept behind it,
and its underlying causes appear quite similar.
The problem with Photorealism is that on the one
hand its ease of comprehension, due to its largely familiar
subject matter, positions it, from a superficial standpoint,
within a populist ethos, a sphere that somehow might ren
der it suspect to those who insist that abstraction is the
mainstream of twentieth century art, especiaJly if realism
proper is viewed as a regression from those gcials. This atti
tude derives from not broadly viewing the period in its
political, historic, and aesthetic setting that goaded its gen
eration to respond to their surroundings in such a radically
divergent way. Despite this, a common interest in irre
ducible fact, primary sources of information, the use of
technology, and a cool approach to its execution seem to
link the otherwise dissonant artistic camps. In some sense,
Minimalism and Photorealism, while two different modern
modes, were responding to the very same situation.
Photorealism shared center stage with Minimalism
on the art scene of the 1970's as reflected in the galleries of
NY and especially those of Soho. For those coming of age
in the late 60's, while studying in studio or related art class
es, the focus was on two predominant prior threads of 20th
century art. Matisse was posited on one side, with his lega
cy of brilliant color, its subjectivity and expressiveness
based on intuitive emotional responses to observation,
while Picasso was credited with generating Cubism and its
legacy in terms of space. Beyond these variously mattered
also Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, and German
Expressionism, beside American art of the 40's and SO's.
These were viewed as coalescing threads of modernism that
the two forerunners had initially developed. From this,
emerged a notion of what kind of personality the artist typ-
 ified. While its creative genius desired to invent, to formu
]ate outer reality anew, to distance himself from prior opti
cal realities, it thus created works that would express the
irnpulses of the artists' hands and the intuitive responses of
their mind and spirit. In this psychological setting, a per
sonal inner reality would become opposed to outer experi
1e ential reality. Thus, their internal reality would be the impe
i- tuS of their creative processes. But something new emerged
m in the art of the 1960s, which was immediate and fresh.
or from the vantage point of 1970, looking back even at Johns,
as at Rauschenberg, at Rosenquist, Warhol or Lichtenstein,
de who had established their style ten or fifteen years prior, it
Les became obvious that, as the transition was made from the
it, quasi-expressionist impulses of Johns and Rauschenberg to
rhose who were more exclusively Pop, there came about a
me change in the way in which the identity and personality of
1ar he artist could be defined. By then, the emphasis was not so
.nt, much on the physical act of painting, its spontaneity or intu
en ition, which were also ingredients in the initial work of
the Matisse or Picasso or later among the Surrealists and
lSffi Abstract Expressionists. For the generation of 1970, these
.tti- notions exerted a pull far different from the way the artists
its 0f the 1950's in New York would have related to them.
;en The Pop revolution or rebellion of the sixties had a
ally number of sources. Especially significant was their redis
rre covery of Dada, particularly that of Marcel Duchamp's
e of Readymades. Another trend, ripe to be rediscovered, was
n to rhe American WPA era. Grant Wood, was a fascinating fig
:nse, ure with his seerningly retardataire approach to creating
dern images which hearkened back to techniques of a Piero della
Francesca, or of a Seurat. The quasi-airless, nearly pointil
tlism listic treatment in tempera, so evenly applied and so nearly
es of photographic in its results, exerted a particular fascination.
f age Furthermore, there was the style of Social Realism, in
;lass- which art might become an instrument of portraying soci
20th ery's flaws. These all were notions that would have been on
lega thc minds of those emerging onto the art scene of the 1970s.
eness While the creative impulses of Pollock, DeKooning,
ation, Gottlieb, or Rothko dominated the established scene, it was
nd its nderstood, that for artists coming of age toward 1970, the
ttered Innovations of the Abstract Expressionist group, however
:rrnan respected, already belonged to the past.
l 50' s. Pop Art seemed then to be the most exciting new
n that lrnd i':1 American art, For those who didn't live through
.
thi, lt
1 this , 1s hard to imagine that Pop could be extremely irri
st typ- tati? to the purists in the art world. lt was regarded as
nt
i-itellectual, and affording little vision of idealism,
e
. ing 1 nterpreted, if not as a critique of American material
tsm, at least as an almost inevitable outgrowth of a vulgar
commercialism and industrialism. Now one might look
back from the vantage point of thirty or forty years later at
that period as a fascinating panorama of American history
with its calamities of the Kennedy assassination, the
Vietnam war, the era of Student protest, of youthful dissent
against their elders and the forces of repression of freedom
and creativity, which then constituted a generational war.
These were the elements that greeted someone who walked
into the art scene of 1969-70-71.
Remembered also were the episodes of 1968 which
in America were manifested by the protests at the
Democratic Convention, the candidacy of Eugene
McCarthy, while in Paris the concurrent revolution in the
streets was of a more forceful character. There was some
thing slightly repressed, or futile, about the Americans in
that era as their social protest did not result in enduring
progress or reform, due either to the proliferation of drugs
or to some other social inadequacy. The context established
by these adversities became an important component in the
development of Photorealism. Everyone involved in the
movement lived through this, whether or n they were
waving a banner. Just as those Americans who lived
through 9/11, or earlier through the Second World War,
became different because of these events, Americans who
experienced the sixties were also changed by those issues.
After Pop Art emerged, that movement assumed its
identity due to certain chief players, like Warhol, Oldenburg,
Lichtenstein, Johns, and Rauschenberg. Some paint splash
ing and drippings were considered normal in those days. All
these artists were comparatively gestural when they started,
though their works became increasingly crisp and more
defined by the mid 60's. During this time, younger artists
stylistic interests bifurcated into two directions, representa
tional or abstract. Out of the ethos of Pop Art, at least one
figure- Frank Stella, bridged this circumstance.
In the earliest phase of his career, he was noted for
some abstract, optically engaging, rhythmically patterned
stripe painting, which became a version of system painting.
lt emphasized the factuality of the stripes, which were
painted hard edge. Stella determined their thickness in rela
tion to the wooden stretcher bars underlying the canvas
and distributed them evenly from edge to center. Projecting
out from the wall, because of the heft of its support, the
piece was endowed with a quality of objecthood and con
veyed a sensibility quite different from the intuitive
abstractions of a Barnett Newman or a Rothko.
Despite his rejection of representation, Stella
became grouped with the Pop artists, with whom he shared
the strongest affinity as to execution and stridency of color.
 Through the 60's, the way to apply paint became far less
personal, far more amenable to systematized treatment.
Warhol then implemented a succession of procedures in his
transpositions of the image, in order to distance his persona
from the picture. An initial photo source most often appro
priated, silk screen stenciling, and a serial repetition of the
image, provided a maximum of objectivity, which came to
be equated with pictorial universality. In subsequent Stages,
spanning most of the diverse artists of the sixties, progres
sive levels of stylistic depersonalization were introduced; in
minimal art its parallel being the idea of fabrication. In the
case of Judd and Flavin, the art object could even be exe
cuted by somebody else, according to a plan. A minimalist
aesthetic became adopted wherein there was little evidence
of the artist's hand. Refined and careful machining realized
the idea of the piece, while the artist per se stepped back. So
different was the work of Pollack and De Kooning, where
every splatter, every drip, suggested the artists guts and
blood on the canvas, his raw emotion thus all externalized,
while thereafter, the concept, the clarity, the refinement, the
reductive idea itself became fundamental, and as little
amenable to modification or intervention as possible.
Their goal became creating something pure, impar
tial, and true. In their work, Photorealists like Richard
Estes, Ralph Goings, or John Salt, would attempt a parallel
mode. In a very spiritual way, the individual self is evaded
completely as personality is evidenced in a little suspected
fashion yet still in an obvious one: namely by the very
choice of its subject. And something further occurred, if
often inadequately appreciated, the fact that everybody
who did this type of art has employed a differing way of
arriving at it. Even if the surfaces looked uninflected, dis
passionate, and projected utter clarity through crystalline
sharp focus, there still were several individual choices pos
sible, e.g. by determining how to apply their paint and in
which way to arrive at that seemingly objective image. This
is the domain where their personality comes across, just as
among the minimalists, Don Judd consistently worked
through his boxes, Dan Flavin his fluorescent light fixtures,
or Carl Andre his squares on the floor. The Photorealists,
in a very subtle way, defined themselves by whether they
used airbrush, whether they worked from black and white
photographs and introduced their own color into the paint
ing, whether they projected slides, or worked from 60 pho
tos all laid out, or whether they divided their image into
boxes on a grid. All these are features that the spectator
may not suspect when viewing a range of twelve artists.
Though at a casual glance, their images may seem so simi
lar, these are all different, they all have contrasting ways of
10
putting down the paint. The basic reason behind their
apparent objectivity, traces back to their experiences in the
60's. Be they Minimalists or Photorealists, what they rea!ly
sought, was an objective truth. Every generation is looking
for its own. To the American generation of Abstract
Expressionists, there was an advocacy which affirme d
human freedom and spirit in the face of fascism. Artists
emerging in the 1960' s found this already accomplished,
and on some level they were privileged since it was no more
their issue to have to confront the life and death struggle
that their precursor's had faced. The 60's generation expect
ed a much better world, but were disappointed that this had
not fully been realized. Then, almost as if to restage the ear
lier antagonisms, they were questioning the efficacy of
human culture with its academia, its politics and religion
and other forces normally presumed to move humanity
forward. In Paris the idea of closing the universities, getting
rid of the museums, was very much on people's minds. In a
sense, it was an attitude of nihilism, in terms of its ques
tioning the potential of history to solve its problems, based
on institutions of the past. Their frustration, their despon
dency, and anger, were manifested by the suspicion, that
there was no truth. The disconnect between the leadership
and society at large had rarely been so exacerbjlted. As if to
create an antidote, the art of the 1970's proposed a redis
covery of unalterable factuality. For the Minimalists, this
meant that they exhaustively investigated primary forms
like the cube or the square. The Photorealists, in their
moral disenchantment, like the similarly disgr,untled
Minimalists, superseded previous gesturally conceived art
by more even-handed creations, done with photographic
actuation in order to achieve the highest degree of repre
sentational validity.
Within the Photorealist movement, a number of
key artists emerged early on who defined the style in terms
of specified subject matter and manner. Arguably the first
Photorealist to enjoy much recognition was Richard Estes
(1936 - ). His ultimate subject became quintessentially New
York, reflecting that city within a particular era through a
consistent quality of vision, which evokes the ways in
which the city had entered universal consciousness, often
through media like movies or other forms of observation.
Estes signature works emphasize street scenes
redolent with vernacular, like the sign lettering and build
ing styles ranging from Soho's cast iron architecture to
those of Art Deco, on to the 1950's. Its stress is put on the
tawdriness and ordinariness of the subject matter revealing
 a pervasive banality. This stance, an extenson of_ _the ati
elite bias of Pop Art, became closely 1dent1f1ed w1th
Photorealism.
Compositionally, Estes' earlier paintings like Shoe
out/et, 1973, or Diner, 1971, uses a primary topic, often a
e single building, viewed frontally, in flattened perspective,
e with adjoining ones cropped. An alternate mode explores
deeper spatial perspectives. In Hotel Empire, 1987, a
d streetscape on New York's West Side, Estes doubles up tra
- clitional one point perspective to provide two discrete
>f views, each with its own disappearing point on the horizon,
n and a strong diagonal thrust towards the viewer at the
y intersection. Pictorial balance is reached by the positioning
tg of the trees versus the relative mass of the buildings.
a Such visual details as address numbers, prices on
s signs, or the vintage of parked cars allow for recognition of
!d place and time, rendered more specific by the artists atten
n tion to shadows and reflections. Either devoid of figures or
.at showing limited action, the images convey at once, by the
.1 p stillness of a frozen moment, a sense of expectancy. Estes
to uses clarity of light and depth of shadow to distill every
1S- aspect of the scene, each element treated with equal weight
11S and thoroughness right to the edge of the canvas.
ms Estes favors the high noon of mid day, a stark kind
eir of light as opposed to dramatic early mornings or twilight.
,ed His attention to such details as the cracks on the pavement
art or differing cement textures indicate his priorities, such as
hie noticing and recording specific items that are not usually
re- accorded visual value. While some of Estes' subjects are
appreciated architecturally today, they were not so in 1970.
That the New York he portrayed was almost vanishing
gives those works the aura of a preservation project, reveal
of ing New York as a potential stage set.
rms Unlike the human eye, conventional photography
:irst affords only a singular focal length. To compensate, Estes
stes discovered that he could garner the needed visual informa
ew tion to portray a full range of focal distance within a single
h a image by using as his resource numerous photographic
:, .
s m studies of the location. Each provided a diverse aspect
ften which the artist composed into a version which could con
on. vey more information than either a single photograph or
enes normal observation, hence the aptness of the term Super
1ild realism. Despite the abundant, photographically verifiable,
e to visual information, the artist demonstrates his intuition by
1 the the selection of a vantage point that frames and positions
aling that perceived information. The handling, as also in the
application of paint, may appear to be depersonalized, but
s individual taste and style are revealed yet by offering
h1s favored pictorial configurations.
Ralph Goings (1928- ) first produced a body of
work, stressing reflective surfaces on airstream trailers,
planes, and especially trucks, but ultimately he became
more famous for his diner images. Like Estes, his preferred
themes have been influential on subsequent phases of
Photorealism. Between Goings' images of small town
Americana and Estes urban scenes, they cover a similar
visual turf as Edward Hopper.
Goings' characteristic works portray either the
interior or exterior of the diner. A comparative emptiness
of these sites reflects Goings' own present surroundings, as
he lives in the hinterlands of New York's underpopulated
countryside. He portrays the little towns as having their
own life, modest and unassuming, self contained and self
reliant. A particular rigor, and austerity marks his choice of
subject as well as his mode of compositional organization
and of his paint application. Even handed, democratic, it is
quintessentially American.
In Pee Wee's Diner Still Life, 1977, and Still Life
with Hot Sauce, 1980, Goings departs from the overall
context of the diner towards a more specific element.
Though calling up art-historical sources, the eye-level van
tage and horizontal arrangement of some distinctively
shaped table-top items recall certain metaphysical still lifes
such as those of Giorgio Morandi. However, the pop spir
it of commercial labels, and the familiar look of mass pro
duced objects bring them ironically into the realm of the
everyday.
John Baeder's (1933 -) consistent subject of the
diners derive from his lifetime project of finding them at
both the country and the city. These sites, dating from
between the 40's to the 70's, are captured in his art as
emblems of American social culture. His preoccupation
resonates with Photorealism's validation of non-elitist cul
ture, particularly as to what, in fact, people use and do in
their daily lives. Baeder's Day and Night Diner, 1984,
shows the old fashioned kind, made out of a train caboose.
The rear brick building reveals the residue of its own sign
board, with the letters PACK, while the sign above the
diner consists of an arrow and the word diner in neon .
11 II
An air conditioner, wrought iron railing, the entry door at
the building's narrow side, single step, sidewalk, and street
all suggest a modesty of setting quite opposite from more
common glitzy fast-food chain restaurants. No high rank
ing architect, or even mass marketer, produced this design.
The can do initiative of this humble home-grown venture
II II
attests to its independence and originality, linked to that
cheapest form of American vernacular architecture, the
mobile home.
 Davis Cone (1950 -) is intensely dedicated to downtown
main street images, a movie marquee as its center of inter
est. In Pal, 1984, a physical extension over the theatre's
shadowed entry space is topped by three surviving letters,
part of its original designation still being visible. Evocative
of a state of desuetude, the scene features vacant parking
spaces, a big 70's era car, a fire hydrant and a garbage pail,
and a sidewalk with cracks, which complete the archetypal
Main Street in decaying transition. As if in a reprise of the
earlier Ashcan School, updated with imagery from films like
Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show 1971, this subject
matter sustains the realist tradition of the commonplace.
If Estes and other Photorealists merely include
urban signage within the streetscape theme, Robert
Cottingham (1935 -) focuses on the signage itself, thus pro
ducing an emblematic blow-up, consistently square and all
but flat, that even functions as an abstraction. Since the
design elements of the letters themselves play a role in the
composition, they dictate its forms. Cottingham extracts
his motif from a wider vista, and selectively crops his scene
down to just a single word or a very simple grouping of
words, their sense quite familiar, but yet at a state of
remove. Words decontextualized introduce their own inde
pendent meaning beside a suggestive, poetic potential that
transcends their initial pragmatic use as advertising. Thus,
they hearken rather back to the Pop Art pictorial practice
of isolating individual words. Evidence of the surrounding
wall, or other structural features, sometimes suggest the
larger period, setting, and atmosphere. Cottingham accord
ingly monumentalizes casual glimpses.
Cottingham gained his reputation by using historic
Art Deco sign faces, sometimes incorporating neon tubing
shaped as letters. In ltalian Grill, 1972, the main image is
placed dead center. Bright sun light, heightened by shad
ows, defines the forms. Enough extraneous visual informa
tion is given so that the viewer recognizes the rhythmically
patterned architectural details in the niches established by
windows and doorways. Radios, 1977, features reflections
in a wall of mirrored blocks, fragmenting images of a Kent
advertising billboard and a nearby building to comprise a
naturally occurring cubist visual phenomenon.
Don Eddy's (1944- ) subjects have their roots in
Pop, as his dealing with consumer objects indicates. But he
goes beyond their direct depiction to select compositions
with particularly complex visual pattern, achieved by a mul
tiplicity of shapes compounded by reflections. In Silverware
I, 1976 , Eddy captures a dazzling play of light and form in
the polished metal of silver objects shown through a shop
window, as light reflections that bounce from object to
12
object create diamond-like effects. Their handling varies, to
portray a certain range of characteristic surfaces.
Photorealist painters chose to stress flatness
because of the suppressed tactile qualities of their painted
surface and its photographic look, but are nevertheless
often quite adventurous in their exploration of spatial
depth. While some approach the subject head on, more fre
quently it is investigated at a slight angle. Representational
tactics often fit within traditional trompe l' oeil, wherein
shallow spatial depth heightens convincing illusion. This
becomes especially notable with the inclusion of such
inherently flat elements as postcards, wooden planks,
labels, stamps, dollar bills in their works. Don Eddy's, New
Shoes, 1973 , is replete with many references to "Flagg"
shoes with their advertising logos and prices, as numerous
pairs of colorful platform shoes are portrayed within rather
illusionistic devices. As in traditional sources within this
visual idiom, slightly slimmer objects, used like still life
items shown in a shallow space under glass, still convey an
illusion as being modeled in contrasting light and shade. In
this painting, additional information is provided by the cars
on the surrounding street and other major objects reflected
in the glass. The metaphor of a vitrine, like aJoseph Cornell
sculpture, suggests a world both within and ithout.
In a similar manner, Charles Bell (1935-1995) con
flates gum ball machines, pin ball games, and kitsch-col
lectible tin toys into glistening images, nostalgic of youth,
though their sources once were vernacular anonymous art.
In, 100 Point When Lit, 1980, Bell captures an atmosphere
of light and sound through an appetizing and sensual
approach to visceral color. Like Cottingham, he monumen
talizes an anti-elite image. His circular forms capturing
reflective light, create a miniature world through his atten
tion to the structure of the machine itself, its angles, the
arches, contours and such details as numbers on individual
sprockets, mechanistic elements to channel the pin ball,
beside a face of a cartoon action hero. These visual elements
produce a series of abstract forms which instead the eye
reads as realism.
In contrast to America's affluent suburbs and
cities, the values, orientation, and aspirations documented
by much Photorealism read true to the vastness of the land
everywhere else. Delving at utmost remove from the realm
of the stylish, Photorealism, as if to make its point, also
stresses attention to various forms of trash, rusted objects,
or otherwise relegated goods. The visual nuances of
garbage are explored, factually exhaustive and carefully evi
denced. A literal sense of investigation is applied to a whole
realm of concepts, things that are expended, or disposed of,
 5 a in
dependent subject. That theme has been pursued by
''.ert:in a rtists, chiefly Idelle Weber and John Salt.
Idelle Weber (1935 -) has provided a comparative
l p b e a t treatment of street debris as well as other sorts of
ls;l y a s. C oke bottles, Oran.ge Crush boxes, y the .side of
b ro ad or in a garbage pa1l, though tough m their own
\ ar e Po p in their recognition of labels, and thus remind
:/ 0 f representa ions by Wesslmann, Warol nd
L'cbrenstein and, m a way, Cottmgham. As m Pink
1 0
;,
C;iamptile, 1978, her works revel in randomness, but there
5 a deliberate artfulness in the way she hones in on the
ts omposicion, whose _Pictorial ogic, aintained by scale,
:r posirioning and frammg edge, 1s sustamed by the happen
stance of the way garbage lies where it falls.
John Salt (1937 -) portrays rusting hulks of autos, a
:e
LS
.n parciculady significan . An::ierican subject for an English
.n born artist. As exemplifted m Albuquerque Wreck, 1972 and
rs Pontiac wtth Tree Trunk 1973, he conveys a fascination with
:d degradation, such as encrustation with rust and oxidation,
showing something once purposefully manufactured now
:ll
rendered obsolete. Exemplifying nature's reclamation, these
n remnants bespeak materialism vanquished and a sponta
neous and inevitable re-composition of what was once
,1-
:h, orga,ni:?ied for constructive purposes. Despite these apparent
lv unfortunate circumstances, sunlight and incipient green
rt.
ry 0f plant life, growing among the ruins, assert the resur
:re
1al gence of nature, even as decay does its work. Nature is
:n hown gaining the upper hand, if through rusting metal, and
ng accordingly cuts human pretensions down to size. Salt's cars,
onee cherished consumer icons, recall the Pop idiom of
:he sculptor John Chamberlain, though to a vastly different end.
ual Another important approach within Photorealism
all, comprises composed or invented reality, put together out of
nts photo-der:ived images. Two artists chiefly associated with
qe this idiom are Audrey Flack and Ben Schonzeit. Both
eschew Photorealism's typical preference for American real
ISt imagery of run down mainstreets, diners, or urban street
ind
red cenes. Instead, historic and art historical narratives are
i.nd ,envey.ed through symbolic images and forms replete with
a)m psyehological and autobiographical references. A surreal
quafy where-in the very small is often made grand is linked
1lso
lO Styles of trompe l' oeil painting in its Dutch or American
:cts
verions, sustained by Photorealist techniques, chiefly from
of
eVI pmiec;ced slides transposed by airbrush. Narrative is real
!Z trough symbolic juxtaposition and placement of these
Jole
Jepictions, many two dimensional in source.
l of,
Richard McLean's (1934 -) Sbeba, 1977, created a
sensation when it was first shown at New York's
O.K.Harris Gallery prompting comparisons to the great
early 19th century English sporting artist, Stubbs. This
might seem an unlikely relationship, considering photore
alism's repute for deadpan objectivity, but McLean's Sbeba
is exceptional for its romantic air of emotionality whereby
the horse evinces an anthropormorphic sense of personali
ty and intelligence. This effect is heightened by the artists
attention to the horse's facial expression, tense pose, and
description of every fold or vein of the horse's skin and
musculature. The visual elements which tie this work to
the mainstream of Photorealism, are manifold. Notable is
the array of miscellaneous objects, hoses, etc. on the
ground, a type of still-life of anonymous objects at the base
of the image, and also the trompe l'oeil effect of the hang
ing tarp to the left, which is similar in nature as a flat foil to
three dimensional elements in the same manner as the
awning shown in Idelle Weber's Bean Basket, 1973.
Ron Kleemann (1937 -) is known for exuberant
treatments of race-cars, engines, trucks and particularly
fire-trucks. These emphasize reflections in chrome p,nd pol
ished enamel painted metal surfaces of the main motif,
shown large, usually cropped at the canvas edge. Context,
and considerable ancillary detail, usually suggests action,
typically on a city street or race-track. In Stars and Stripes
Forever, 1977, a mostly white service vehicle, adorned wi.th
a pattern of stars and red stripes, shows lettering of the
Indy 500 of 1976, set against an industrial looking building
with some grass and fir trees in the background. The truck,
tools, a thermos, emergency lighting, and an array of
descriptive detail complete the image.
The works of Glen Hansen (1961 -) exemplify the
continuing relevance of the Photorealist ethos, as younger
artists have adapted its vision and techniques to their own
aesthetic. A typical Hansen practice of extracting the image
from what might suggest a larger vista suggests an affinity
for Cottingham striking a balance between representation
al and abstract elements. In Hansen's, Fifth Avenue
Building, (from Street Clock Series), 1991 and Libra (from
Ancient Venetian Sundial Series), 2000, all forms are crisp,
clear, and identifiable with every contour and surface mod
eled in bright light and shadow creating a complex array of
designs, heightened by the compositional impact of the
unusual tondo format.
Audrey Flack's (1931 -)most consistently explored
painted theme is her Vanitas series. In such works, personal
and collective memory are incorporated into the symbolic
 process employed in 18th century Dutch Vanitas still- life.
Thematically, they convey life's evanescence and transience
by using such motifs as the burning candle, or a skull, while
indicating the fleeting character of beauty by a rase or ripe
fruit, and the evil of vanity by a mirror. In Invocation,
1982, Flack adds to these elements a watercolor set and
brush, and a tube of acrylic paint that among other objects,
underscore her identity as an artist. In World War II,
Vanitas, 1976-77, various symbols bespeak the good things
in life, which contrast with the despondent image of holo
caust victims. This is typical of Flack, who joins personal
symbols to those of general history. Worked with airbrush,
edges are crisp and more defined and moving tones of
shadows are almost pointillistic, evidencing the particular
ly smooth aesthetic of the air brush.
In the case of Ben Schonzeit (1942 -), his earliest
works, though strongly Pop in sentiment, possessed a sur
real undercurrent due to unexpected juxtapositions, tricky
layering of images, perforated, cut-out, or superimposed
imagery, and other pictorial tactics that contested straight
forward perception. Ben Schonzeit became initially famed
for his large scale blow ups of things like vegetables and
flowers, along with a body of work dating from around
1970, that featured images of cookies, childhood toys, gold
fish, printed pictures from packs of souvenir sugar, or
brightly colored candy and other unusual motifs. Typically,
such paintings featured two or more layers of imagery,
superimposed, as in the case of Strawberries (Watercolors
11), 1970. There, an array of strawberries, which have the
crisp look of being extracted from a magazine advertise
ment, appear to hover weightlessly above the gridded
palette of a watercolorist. The apparently casual splatter of
paint on this surface, a fine foil to the perfectly rendered
fruit, serves as an autobiographical reference to the life of
the artist in a manner comparable to that of Flack's
Invocation, 1982. lt is notable that at this time (ca. 1970-
72), Schonzeit produced certain prescient works employing
layered imagery.
Two leading sculptors of Photorealism are Duane
Hanson (1925-1996) andJohn de Andrea (1941 -) who real
ize their works by casting from live model. The subject is
coated with vaseline, encased in plaster which hardens into
components that comprise a mold, which is then cast in
plastic or bronze. This is thereafter hand painted with skin
tones and endowed with prosthetic eyes and hair implants.
Duane Hanson produced a body of work that
recreates a wide cross-section of middle America, though
often cast from friends or family members who served as
his models. Hanson pays tribute to those who have worked
hard at physical labor, often in highly skilled or monoto-
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nous jobs, who also comprise the vast, unheralded, uncred
ited, public , who actually keep the country moving. Ther
is indeed a special quality of American-ness about thei:
physiognomies, in the way either age, lifestyle, or emotion
al life, are reflected in their features through facial wrinkle s
specific muscle, or flesh tone as well as other particul ars'.
Actual clothes serve as costumes. By their attitude of stil!
ness and apparent resignation, these fi gures present a pro
found social comment achieved through that convincin gly
factual depiction of the sitter, which appears as much the
embodiment of a type as of a particular person. Flea Market
Lady, 1990, with her blanket, bag, and goods, and the
Security Guard, 1980, whose stance communicates w eight
of years and physical exhaustion, are both classics of this
idiom.
John de Andrea is associated most consistently
with the nude. Garnet, 1996, leaning back in her chair with
outstretched legs, conveys a somewhat abstracted, intro
spective gaze. An archetypal female image, slender and
lithe, her identity eschews such designations as nurse,
housewife, student or courtesan. Devoid of exaggeration
and caricature, or expressionist subjectivity like Botero's or
Giacometti's, Garnet's specialized place in the history of
nude portrayals derives from her lack of oyert narration,
agressive eroticism, or any other links to pnor patterns of
female representation. The youthful portrait head of Tara
(bust), 2000, which is qualitatively consistent with Garnet,
nonetheless suggests individuation because the viewer's
attention is not divided between face and body.
As a variety of Photorealist themes involve signage
urban or rural, imagery of five and ten cent Stores, coff ee
shops, diners, 1950's lettering, stores ,and markets, and var
ied evidences of commercial activity, the movement favors
subjects for the most part quite typically realist.
Its most striking characteristic is its avoidance of
the subjective or seemingly emotional treatment. The artis
tic emphasis is on an attempt to comprehend, decipher and
understand actual fact. In the 60's and 70's, fact became
contested and doubted, whether concerning Vietnam,
Kennedy assasination, or whatever else, while the best of
schools, privilege or preference failed to produce viable
answers. In that age of profound doubt and unanswered
questions, Photorealists, and Minimalists were mandating
to get back to basics.
lt appeared that Photorealists were not forthcom
ing in offering an explanation of the significance of their
images, which have not imputed anything other than what
they show. But they appear anyway transcendent because
of their resonance with the dominant topics in our con
sciousness and experience. Thus, the Photorealist's diners,
 or whatever other subject, are symbols of a nation on the
rno ve. The diner becomes a retreat on the road, a home away
from home, and even social club of the community. These
subjects derived from all over the country, could be as var
ied as they are universal. As there is a quality about them
rharseems just a bit rough, their individualized suggestion of
nostalgia provides an antidote to the blandness of mass-mar
ket visual conformity. Embodying the randomness of road
sid e culture, they project a measure of freedom and comfort
with the ordinary, that remains uniquely American.

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