“Is it art if it looks like something that isn’t art?” That’s the question posed by Wendy Blazier, senior curator of the Boca Raton Museum of Art before a recent tour of the Florida museum’s current exhibit, “Shock of The Real: Photorealism Revisited.”
The genre, more a style than a formalized movement, favors quintessentially American subjects like diners, art deco movie theaters and automobiles. When seen from a distance, the paintings resemble photographs. Get a little closer, and the “is it art” question is answered when the viewer glimpses the high level of virtuosity required to achieve such an illusion. The term Photorealism was coined by New York City gallery owner Louis K. Meisel in 1969. According to Blazier, the Boca Raton Museum of Art is the first in the nation to assemble a retrospective of this magnitude.
Historically, artists from Edgar Degas to Paul Cezanne have used photographs as visual aids in their work. Photorealists take it a step further by actually transferring photographic slides on to a canvas and painting over the image.
Sometimes the likeness is projected to scale, but often the artist will manipulate the size to produce a different perspective. Such is the case with the late Charles Bell, whose paintings of vintage toys were often depicted in a scale as much as ten times life size. Imagine a huge steel ball ricocheting off a bumper that is aiming for you in his colorful close-up paintings of pinball machines. One of Bell’s finest, “Tropical Nights,” is included here.
Augusta Georgia native Davis Cone is featured prominently too.
For the past twenty-five years, Cone has meticulously captured the architectural grandeur of the old time movie palace. His paintings are alive with vivid detail. “County 1999,” with its Art Deco neon sign of bright blue and canary yellow is a perfect example of the artist’s masterful eye for composition and color. Movie director Peter Bogdanovich once wrote that Cone’s paintings “produce an oddly emotional experience: a sharp recognition of a kind of innocence lost, a distant memory suddenly recaptured.”
On “Thompson 1980,” Cone has used the camera to record the effects of light and shadow on a once stately movie house in suburban Atlanta. Now we see its faded paint and broken light panels and become nostalgic for a time when going downtown to see a movie was an event, and not simply an average visit to a shopping mall movie megaplex.
Some of the more lively paintings in this exhibit belong to Idelle Weber, one of the few female artists to have achieved recognition for her Photorealist work. Weber, who has taught art at Harvard University and New York University, first achieved recognition as a Pop Art painter during the genre’s 1960’s heyday. Weber’s bold hues were likely influenced by her work in the era of Warhol and Rauschenberg.
“The possibility for a compelling color statement plays a strong part in my selection process,” she once wrote. The artist has three works on display here including “Corner Fruit Jungle,” an oil painting from 1974 that features a bright yellow storefront sign which dominates the upper half of the canvas. Underneath, open crates of ruby red tomatoes and crisp green beans appear as though three dimensional. It almost looks as if the produce can be plucked right off the canvas.
For many, the hallmark of Photorealism is its detached objectivity. For museum curator Wendy Blazier, that approach makes sense considering its historical context.
“In the 1950’s, the art world was all about abstract expressionism which was physical and emotional,” she said. “The Pop Art of the 1960’s was a reaction against the feelings and gesture of that movement. If Pop Art was all flash and fun, then the Photorealists were the opposite of that; dead serious, neutral, with an emphasis on technique.”
When California native Ralph Goings graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1953 he was a disciple of Abstract Expressionism, but a passion for photography eventually led him to a career in Photorealism.
“It went against all my art school training,” he once wrote. Today, the artist is best known for his highly detailed paintings of pick-up trucks, and the interiors of hamburger stands and diners. Embracing banality doesn’t make the work boring though. Goings succeeds in breathing new life into everyday objects by making us see the loveliness in the otherwise mundane. In the 1981 watercolor “Red Menu,” a Heinz ketchup bottle, pepper shaker and sugar container appear monumental thanks to the artist’s intensity of focus. Removed of any background, the items look epic. Elsewhere, “Collins Diner,” reveals Goings’ admitted fascination for the effects of light on surface. This close-up of a diner interior finds the artist skillfully capturing the reflective qualities of chrome counters and glass enclosed pie windows. These paintings are certainly far removed from the artist’s early abstract work.
“People were upset by what I was doing,” Goings has said about his first Photorealist paintings.
“That gave me encouragement in a perverse sort of way. I was delighted to be doing something that was really upsetting people. I was having a hell of a lot of fun.”
The genre, more a style than a formalized movement, favors quintessentially American subjects like diners, art deco movie theaters and automobiles. When seen from a distance, the paintings resemble photographs. Get a little closer, and the “is it art” question is answered when the viewer glimpses the high level of virtuosity required to achieve such an illusion. The term Photorealism was coined by New York City gallery owner Louis K. Meisel in 1969. According to Blazier, the Boca Raton Museum of Art is the first in the nation to assemble a retrospective of this magnitude.
Historically, artists from Edgar Degas to Paul Cezanne have used photographs as visual aids in their work. Photorealists take it a step further by actually transferring photographic slides on to a canvas and painting over the image.
Sometimes the likeness is projected to scale, but often the artist will manipulate the size to produce a different perspective. Such is the case with the late Charles Bell, whose paintings of vintage toys were often depicted in a scale as much as ten times life size. Imagine a huge steel ball ricocheting off a bumper that is aiming for you in his colorful close-up paintings of pinball machines. One of Bell’s finest, “Tropical Nights,” is included here.
Augusta Georgia native Davis Cone is featured prominently too.
For the past twenty-five years, Cone has meticulously captured the architectural grandeur of the old time movie palace. His paintings are alive with vivid detail. “County 1999,” with its Art Deco neon sign of bright blue and canary yellow is a perfect example of the artist’s masterful eye for composition and color. Movie director Peter Bogdanovich once wrote that Cone’s paintings “produce an oddly emotional experience: a sharp recognition of a kind of innocence lost, a distant memory suddenly recaptured.”
On “Thompson 1980,” Cone has used the camera to record the effects of light and shadow on a once stately movie house in suburban Atlanta. Now we see its faded paint and broken light panels and become nostalgic for a time when going downtown to see a movie was an event, and not simply an average visit to a shopping mall movie megaplex.
Some of the more lively paintings in this exhibit belong to Idelle Weber, one of the few female artists to have achieved recognition for her Photorealist work. Weber, who has taught art at Harvard University and New York University, first achieved recognition as a Pop Art painter during the genre’s 1960’s heyday. Weber’s bold hues were likely influenced by her work in the era of Warhol and Rauschenberg.
“The possibility for a compelling color statement plays a strong part in my selection process,” she once wrote. The artist has three works on display here including “Corner Fruit Jungle,” an oil painting from 1974 that features a bright yellow storefront sign which dominates the upper half of the canvas. Underneath, open crates of ruby red tomatoes and crisp green beans appear as though three dimensional. It almost looks as if the produce can be plucked right off the canvas.
For many, the hallmark of Photorealism is its detached objectivity. For museum curator Wendy Blazier, that approach makes sense considering its historical context.
“In the 1950’s, the art world was all about abstract expressionism which was physical and emotional,” she said. “The Pop Art of the 1960’s was a reaction against the feelings and gesture of that movement. If Pop Art was all flash and fun, then the Photorealists were the opposite of that; dead serious, neutral, with an emphasis on technique.”
When California native Ralph Goings graduated from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1953 he was a disciple of Abstract Expressionism, but a passion for photography eventually led him to a career in Photorealism.
“It went against all my art school training,” he once wrote. Today, the artist is best known for his highly detailed paintings of pick-up trucks, and the interiors of hamburger stands and diners. Embracing banality doesn’t make the work boring though. Goings succeeds in breathing new life into everyday objects by making us see the loveliness in the otherwise mundane. In the 1981 watercolor “Red Menu,” a Heinz ketchup bottle, pepper shaker and sugar container appear monumental thanks to the artist’s intensity of focus. Removed of any background, the items look epic. Elsewhere, “Collins Diner,” reveals Goings’ admitted fascination for the effects of light on surface. This close-up of a diner interior finds the artist skillfully capturing the reflective qualities of chrome counters and glass enclosed pie windows. These paintings are certainly far removed from the artist’s early abstract work.
“People were upset by what I was doing,” Goings has said about his first Photorealist paintings.
“That gave me encouragement in a perverse sort of way. I was delighted to be doing something that was really upsetting people. I was having a hell of a lot of fun.”
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