'Photorealism: 50 Years Of Hyperrealistic Painting' At Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

Richard Estes, 'Nedick's', Oil On Canvas, 1970

Context:

My previous post referred to my recent visit to the exhibition, ‘Photorealism: 50 Years Of Hyperrealistic Painting’ at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.  This post will focus on that show and my reflections on the work within it.

BMAG seems good at staging these ambitious shows, (would that someone here in Leicester had the resources or vision).  Last year’s ‘Metropolis: Reflections on The Modern City’exhibition impressed me greatly and I was intrigued to view what is being billed as the first major UK survey of Photorealism.  I hope the horror stories about Birmingham’s public finances won’t mean that shows of this stature soon become a thing of the past.

Ralph Goings, 'America's Favourite', Oil On Canvas, 1989

The use of optical devices by painters in search of high realism is hardly a new phenomenon, Johannes Vermeer being an obvious example of a painter whose work gained an unusual characteristic appearance through reliance on drawing systems and lens technology as early as the Seventeenth Century [1.].  However, here we’re talking about the movement of representational painting that arose in America in the late 1960s and 70s, and in which imagery was derived after the fact of photography rather than just from life through the lens.  Even this was not actually new but the attempt to create a perfect facsimile in paint was.  Photorealism is usually seen as a reaction against the expressionistic abstraction that dominated mid-century American painting, and as a more deadpan offshoot of Pop Art’s celebration of industrial design and commercial culture.  Some accounts regard it as a dead-end in the continuum of painting, but most practicing artists also know that linear accounts and standard explanations are of little creative use.

Ralph Goings, 'Airstream', Oil On Canvas, 1970

The curators of this exhibition identify three generations of Photorealism, charting its beginnings amongst a group of (mostly American) painters in the late 1960s and 70s; its expansion as an accepted trope of international painting in the 1980s and 90s; and continuation into the Twenty-First Century with an increasing reliance on digital technology.

Response:

There’s clichéd sentimentality about much Photorealist subject matter.  The first generation in particular tends towards nostalgia for the familiar Americana motifs of classic diners, commercial signage, Art Deco facades and Detroit gas-guzzlers.  It feels like we drove here from Edward Hopper’s old gas station, maybe watching some Last Picture Show en route.  However, this work lacks the social history one finds in classic photography or the archness of Pop Art.  It mostly looks like good ol’ retro Romanticism.

John Salt, 'White Chevy - Red Trailer', Acrylic On Canvas, 1975

Occasionally, we do see the cracks in the American Dream.  Birmingham-born John Salt depicts once-shiny cars in states of abandonment and disrepair, typical of those that litter the real American landscape by the thousand.  Jack Mendenhall translates found images of West Coast interiors to disquieting effect.  His ‘Ochre Couch’ (1975), feels like the living room where Laura Palmer grew up.

Jack Mendenhall, 'Ochre Couch', Oil On Canvas, 1975

The very term ‘Realism’ itself seems fraught with difficulty.  If Pre-Modernist painting was a search for convincing illusions, since the advent of photography it has really been about questioning the nature of illusion itself, and the relationship between different media.  The lesson of Impressionism, Post Impressionism and Cubism was that visual ‘truth’ is completely subject to the vagaries of human perception and that no mode of depiction could be regarded as realistic that does not account for the shifting viewpoint, the fleeting glimpse and the duration of time spent in looking.  The real Photorealist agenda, then, is not to nail down how humans see, but how the camera records and these are two very different things.  Part of its madness, but also what makes it interesting, is how it seeks, (and generally fails), to emulate the mechanical capture of a brief moment through extended periods of obsessive labour and incredible manual dexterity.

Robert Bechtle, 'Alameda Chrysler', Oil On Canvas, 1981

Ultimately, these paintings seem less about actual appearance and more about translation. Photorealism should be seen as a significant if misguided chapter in the story of painting’s relationship with photography .  Surely, in Walter Benjamin’s ‘Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’ [2.], it would have been remiss not to try this at least.

Davis Cone, 'Thompson', Oil On Canvas, 1990

Actually, none of these paintings look like the world as we really see it.  Neither do most really look like photographs either.  (By now we’re familiar with the ways photographs don’t tell the objective truth).  These pieces lack the residue of a draughtsman’s dialogue between eye and brain, evident in Euston-Road style objectivity for example, but many also gloss over the limitations of exposure, lens distortions and effects of shutter speed that make photographs so of themselves.  They resemble idealised paintings of photographs, - a category in its own right.

Bertrand Meniel, 'Fairmont Hotel', Oil On Canvas, 1991)

Once the second generation get into their stride, the pursuit of artificial pin-sharpness becomes quite bizarre, as in Bertrand Meniel’s ‘Fairmont Hotel’ (1991).  Each component is so precisely rendered that he conjures a sort of hyper-real hallucination way beyond either photography or first hand experience.  In the process, his little fluffy clouds become rigidly sculptural, appearing to have drifted in from a fifteenth century altarpiece.  Even those painters that do consciously incorporate depth of field effects, like Audrey Flack, still don’t quite capture the essential appearance of photographs somehow.

Audrey Flack, 'Shiva Blue', Oil Over Acrylic On Canvas, 1972-73

There are a couple of exceptions to all this.  Rod Penner, reaches near perfect degrees of emulation but doesn't really excite me, whilst Yigal Ozeri, accounts for the limitations of photographic exposure skilfully, but sadly, in the service of strangely unsettling depictions of pretty young women in natural settings.  Perhaps it's just me, but they seem only a step away from a different form of ‘nature photography’.

Yigal Ozeri, 'Jessica In The Park', Oil On Paper, 2010

Another painter who gets close is Peter Maier.  Like many Photorealists he is drawn to automotive subject matter, (all that chrome and curvaceous glossy bodywork appears irresistible), and precision-sprays numerous coats of car paint onto aluminium, achieving a finish of sumptuous, bottomless liquidity.  Whilst totally illusionistic, these seem more about pushing surfaces to an acme of material perfection and interest me more as objects than as mere images.  It’s car-porn essentially but like most fetishism, psychologically intriguing.

Peter Maier, 'Gator Chomp', Du Pont Chromax AT On Aluminium, 2007 

This raises interesting questions regarding the difference between objectification of the (here, female), body, and the eroticising of objects.  John Kacere’s cheesy depictions of lingerie-clad female midsections just seem unjustifiable, lacking, as they do, any discernible element of conceptual rigour or critical context.  Even where an entire figure is depicted, as in the work of Bernardo Torrens, there remains no sense of a living person beneath the perfect surface.  We are reminded that a figurative photograph, however posed, captures one moment in the continuum of a life but always implies the animation that preceded or followed it.  To paint from life obviously takes account of the sitter’s material presence, living and breathing as time unfolds.  To slavishly copy a photograph of them however, is to create a static monument to an already frozen image, - a two dimensional statue, if you like.

Don Jacot, 'Rush Hour', Oil On Canvas, 2009

Much safer then, to take simple visual pleasure in all those lovingly-reproduced polished metallic surfaces, layers of transparency, and glossy, saturated colours elsewhere.  Be they architectural, automotive or still life-derived, all demonstrate how much of Photorealism is the cheerful worship of surfaces combined with a taste for the sweetest eye candy.

Chuck Close, 'Self Portrait', Etched Print On Paper (Proof), 1977

Ironically, Chuck Close, the one artist here who does successfully marry human subject matter with photo-emulation, doesn’t really belong in this exhibition at all.  Close shows us his construction grid and builds his portraits by filling each cell with a consciously gestural mark.  Where others aim for seamless illusion, Close deconstructs the process involved in a far more conceptual way.

Richard Estes, 'Telephone Booths' Acrylic On Board, 1967'

For me, the real Old Master of Photorealism appears to be Richard Estes.  His depictions of urban frontages use geometric composition to achieve a rigorous abstract formality, despite their photographic illusionism.  ‘Telephone Booths’ (1967), and ‘Nedick’s’ (1970), achieve great complexity within their compositional armatures, fragmenting the world in fascinating ways.  With their skillful colour schemes and love for the abstract qualities of polished metal surfaces, these are just impressive paintings before and after they are Photorealist paintings.

Ben Johnson, 'Looking Back To Richmond House', Acrylic On Canvas, 2011

The most recent practitioners of Photorealism increasingly rely on digital technology to realise their images.  Disappointingly, their detailed urban vistas often just resemble a form of ambitious tourist art.  Ben Johnson’s immensely labour intensive team efforts ultimately feel like architect’s models of sterile ideal environments.  Raphaella Spence uses a helicopter to achieve massive panoramic distance before reconstructing ultra high-res images on a pixel-by-pixel basis.  Her spectacular, light-drenched ‘Vegas’ (2011), does at least find a subject whose intrinsic hyperreality finally matches the bizarre nature of its representation.

Raphaella Spence, 'Vegas',  Oil On Canvas, 2011

Conclusion:

Photorealism has always struggled for critical acceptance, as Alastair Smart’s recent review proves.  My own take on it may also seem critical, but I should point out that I really rather enjoyed this exhibition.  I’ll admit to seeking an irony in these paintings that I suspect often isn’t there, and that I may relate to some of the work on the level of guilty pleasures.  There’s something a little thrilling about their regular transgressions of ‘good taste’ and, if nothing else, many of these artists have doubtless added to the range of things that paint can do.  It’s a genuinely thought-provoking exhibition, as the length of this post reveals.

[1.]:  Useful technical insights into the relationship between Vermeer’s painting and the science of optics can be found in:  Martin Kemp, ‘The Science Of Art’, New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 1990.

[2.]:  Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work Of Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction’, London, Penguin, (Penguin Great Ideas Series), 2008