Hyperrealism (painting)

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This article is about the art movement of Hyperrealism. In painting and sculpture the phrase "Hyperrealism" is used to describe a photorealistic rendering of people, landscapes and scenes.
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Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high resolution digital photograph. Hyperrealism is a fully-fledged school of art and can be considered as an advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to created the resulting photorealistic paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has recently developed since the early 2000s.[1] However, many Photorealists are also considered Hyperrealists.

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[edit] History

The word Hyperealisme was created by Isy Brachot in 1973 as a French word meaning Photorealism. It was the title of a major catalog and exhibition at his gallery in Brussels Belgium in that year. The exhibition was primarily made up of American Photorealists, such as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Robert Bechtle and Richard McLean. It also included important European influential artists such as Gnoli, Richter, Klapheck and Delcol. Hyperealisme has been since used by European artists and dealers to apply to painters influenced by the Photorealists.

American Photorealist painter Denis Peterson first used the term [2] "Hyperrealism" to apply to a new splinter group of artists whose pioneering works are universally viewed as an offshoot movement of Photorealism. [3][4] [5]

Early 21st century Hyperrealism was founded upon the aesthetic principles of Photorealism. Graham Thompson wrote "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs." [6]

However, Hyperrealism is contrasted with the literal approach found in traditional photorealist paintings of the late 20th century.[7] Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that unlike Photorealism, often is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, often omitting or abstracting certain finite detail in order to maintain a consistent overall pictorial design. [8][9] They often consciously omitted human emotion, political value and narrative elements. The photorealistic style of painting was uniquely tight, precise, and sharply mechanical with an emphasis on mundane everyday imagery, as it was an evolvement from Pop Art. [10]

Hyperrealism, on the other hand, although photographic in essence, can often entail a softer and much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyperrealism paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a new reality not seen in the original photo. That is not to say that they are surreal, as the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects and shadows are painted to appear clearer and more distinct than the reference photo or even the actual subject itself. [11]

Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, ”the simulation of something which never really existed.” [12] As such, Hyperrealists create a false reality that is a convincing illusion; one based upon a simulation of reality (the digital photograph). Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are an outgrowth of extremely high resolution images produced by digital cameras and displayed on computers. As Photorealism emulated analog photography, Hyperrealism utilizes digital imagery and expands upon it to create a new sense of reality. [13][14] Hyperrealistic paintings and sculptures confront the viewer with the illusion of manipulated high resolution images though more meticulous. [15]

[edit] Style and methods

The Hyperrealist style focuses much more of its emphasis on details and the subjects. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are not strict interpretations of photographs, nor are they literal illustrations of a particular scene or subject. Instead, they utilize additional, often subtle, pictorial elements to create the illusion of a reality which in fact either does not exist or cannot be seen by the human eye. [16] Furthermore, they may incorporate emotional, social, cultural and political thematic elements as an extension of the painted visual illusion; a distinct departure from the older and considerably more literal school of Photorealism. [17]

Hyperrealist painters and sculptors make allowances for some mechanical means of transferring images to the canvas or mold, including preliminary drawings or grisaille underpaintings and molds. Photographic slide projections or multi media projectors are used to project images onto canvases and rudimentary techniques such as gridding may also be used to ensure accuracy. [18] Sculptures utilize polyesters applied directly onto the human body or mold. Hyperrealism requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate a false reality. As such, Hyperrealism incorporates and often capitalizes upon photographic limitations such as depth of field, perspective and range of focus. Anomalies found in digital images, such as fractalization, are also exploited to emphasize their digital origins by some Hyperrealist painters, such as Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Istvan Sandorfi, Gilles Esnault, Bert Monroy and Alicia St. Rose. [19]

[edit] Themes

Subject matter ranges from portraits, figurative art, still life, landscapes, cityscapes and narrative scenes. The more recent hyperrealist style is much more literal than Photorealism as to exact pictorial detail with an emphasis on social, cultural or political themes. This also is in stark contrast to the newer concurrent Photorealism with its continued avoidance of photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context. [20][21]

Some hyperrealists have exposed totalitarian regimes and third world military governments through their narrative depictions of the legacy of hatred and intolerance. [22] Denis Peterson, Gottfried Helnwein and Latif Maulan depicted political and cultural deviations of societal decadence in their work. Peterson's work[23] focused on diasporas, genocides and refugees.[24] Helnwein developed unconventionally narrative work that centered around past, present and future deviations of the Holocaust. Maulan’s work is primarily a critique of society’s apparent disregard for the helpless, the needy and the disenfranchised.[25] Provocative subjects include enigmatic imagery of genocides, their tragic aftermath and the ideological consequences. [26] [27] Thematically, these controversial hyperreal artists aggressively confronted the corrupted human condition through narrative paintings as a phenomenological medium.[28] These lifelike paintings are an historical commentary on the grotesque mistreatment of human beings. [29] [30]

Hyperreal paintings and sculptures further create a tangible solidity and physical presence through subtle lighting and shading effects. Shapes, forms and areas closest to the forefront of the image visually appear beyond the frontal plane of the canvas; and in the case of sculptures, details have more clarity than in nature.[31] Hyperrealistic images are typically ten to twenty times the size of the original photographic reference source, yet retain an extremely high resolution in color, precision and detail. Many of the paintings are achieved with an airbrush, using acrylics, oils or a combination of both. Ron Mueck’s lifelike sculptures are scaled much larger than life and finished in incredibly convincing detail through the meticulous use of polyester resins and multiple molds. Bert Monroy’s digital images appear to be actual paintings taken from photographs, yet they are fully created on computers.

[edit] Hyperrealists

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bredekamp, Horst, Hyperrealism - One Step Beyond. Tate Museum, Publishers, UK. 2006. p. 1
  2. ^ Thompson, Graham: American Culture in the 1980s (Twentieth Century American Culture) Edinburgh University Press, 2007 P. 77-79
  3. ^ Jean-Pierre Criqui, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn interview, Artforum International, June 1, 2003
  4. ^ Thompson, Graham: American Culture in the 1980s Edinburgh University Press, 2007 P. 77-79
  5. ^ Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective by Michael Auping, Janet Bishop, Charles Ray, and Jonathan Weinberg. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, (2005). ISBN 978-0520245433
  6. ^ Thompson, Graham: American Culture in the 1980s (Twentieth Century American Culture) Edinburgh University Press, 2007 P. 78
  7. ^ Mayo, Deborah G., 1996, Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. P. 57-72
  8. ^ Chase, Linda, Photorealism at the Millennium, The Not-So-Innocent Eye: Photorealism in Context. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, 2002. pp 14-15.
  9. ^ Nochlin, Linda, The Realist Criminal and the Abstract Law II, Art In America. 61 (November - December 1973), P. 98.
  10. ^ New Britain Museum of American Art - Educational Resources
  11. ^ Meisel, Louis K. Photorealism. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 1980. p. 12.
  12. ^ Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation", Ann Arbor Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1981
  13. ^ Horrocks, Chris and Zoran Jevtic. Baudrillard For Beginners. Cambridge: Icon Books, 1996. p. 80-84
  14. ^ Thompson, Graham: American Culture in the 1980s (Twentieth Century American Culture) Edinburgh University Press, 2007 P. 77-79
  15. ^ Bredekamp, Horst, Hyperrealism - One Step Beyond. Tate Museum, Publishers, UK. 2006. p. 1-4.
  16. ^ Fleming, John and Honour, Hugh The Visual Arts: A History, 3rd Edition. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, 1991. p. 680-710
  17. ^ Meisel, Louis K. Photorealism. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 1980.
  18. ^ Meisel, Louis K. Photorealism. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York. 1980. p. 12-13.
  19. ^ Battock, Gregory. Preface to Photorealism. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1980. pp 8-10.
  20. ^ Petra Halkes, "A Fable in Pixels and Paint - Gottfried Helnwein's American Prayer". Image & Imagination, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005 (ISBN 0-7735-2969-1)
  21. ^ Alicia Miller, "The Darker Side of Playland: Childhood Imagery from the Logan Collection at SFMOMA", Artweek, US, Nov 1, 2000
  22. ^ Jean Baudrillard, "The Precession of Simulacra", in Media and Cultural Studies : Keyworks, Durham & Kellner, eds. ISBN 0631220968
  23. ^ Thompson, Graham: American Culture in the 1980s Edinburgh University Press, 2007 P. 77-79
  24. ^ Robert Ayers, Art Critic, “Art Without Edges: Images of Genocide in Lower Manhattan”, Art Info June 2, 2006 [1]
  25. ^ Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1992). ISBN 978-0679741800
  26. ^ Christoper Ashley, Denis Peterson - Don't Shed No Tears", [2]
  27. ^ Julia Pascal, "Nazi Dreaming", New Statesman, UK, April 10, 2006 [3]
  28. ^ George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (2004). ISBN 978-0761988120
  29. ^ Christoper Rywalt, "Denis Peterson", NYC Art, June 7, 2006 [4]
  30. ^ Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator in Charge, "The Child - Works by Gottfried Helnwein", California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, ISBN 0-88401-112-7, 2004
  31. ^ Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1992). Random House ISBN 978-0679741800
  32. ^ During 1967 Paul Thek's exhibition at the Pace Gallery in New York City called Death of a Hippie, [5], predicted the hyperrealist sculptural movement.