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When photography was
invented, some people
thought painting
would inevitably die.
Why, after all,
would we continue
to painstakingly reproduce
the world as we see it
by repeatedly dobbing small
bits of pigments suspended
in liquid onto a
piece of fabric using
a stick with short
little hairs attached,
when a camera could do so
incredibly effectively,
and much, much faster?
We all know that
painting persisted--
and not just the
impressionism, and abstraction,
and pop art, and what have
you, that took paintings
in directions other
than the pursuit
of realistic optical effects.
Artists still
attempt to recreate
what we see in approximately
the way we humans see it.
But why?
What's with this
tireless obsession?
And why is it worth our time
to look at it when the world
itself is all around
us in pure form?
This is the case for Realism.
So there's an actual art
historical movement called
Realism, and it came
about in Western Europe
in the mid 19th century, right
around-- come to think of it--
when photography was emerging
and getting its fingers
into every aspect of our lives.
The French art
critic, Champfleury,
used the term
Realism to describe
what Gustave Courbet was
doing in the 1840s, which
was rejecting the stronghold
of academic teaching--
the dictated subjects be
mythological or historical.
Courbet wanted to paint what
he saw around him instead--
everyday people and
places of his own time--
more gritty and less
idealized than, say,
Jean-Francois Millet, who
painted contemporary rural
life--
but let's face it--
in a sentimental way.
So Realism the movement was
about depicting the world
as we find it, rather
than as we want it to be.
But it wasn't about painting
in a photographically realistic
way.
Naturalism was
the term for that.
Although the two
approaches were often
paired as in the work
of John Constable, whose
landscape paintings show
us the English countryside
of the early 1800s, and in
a manner closer to the way
we see it, neither realism nor
naturalism were anything new.
Nothing ever is.
Courbet had been influenced
by Velazquez and the painters
of the Spanish golden
age, who represented
their time with astonishingly
realistic effects.
Courbet was also wowed by
the work of 17th century
Dutch painters like
Rembrandt and Franz Hals,
whose work people at the time
claimed looks like life itself.
The Flemish painter, Bruegel,
was a painter of everyday life
before that.
Miniature painting
of the Mughal Empire
drew from many
traditions and dazzles
with moments of
incredible naturalism,
as does 18th century
Chinese scroll painting.
And don't even get me started
with the Italian Renaissance.
Yes-- the development and
use of linear perspective
helped tremendously in
crafting the appearance
of a three-dimensional world
on a two-dimensional surface.
But artists like
Leonardo da Vinci
also pioneered
painting techniques
that yielded faces
and figures that
are startlingly true-to-life.
And Caravaggio's
dramatically lit scenes
brought well-known biblical
stories into the present day
with shocking
immediacy and impact.
And of course, those
artists were looking back
to the ancient
Greeks and Romans,
who for sure represented
ideal figures,
but also during the
Hellenistic period,
portrayed old age, peasant
life, and physical anomalies.
This reminds us that
realism, naturalism,
or whatever you want
to call this desire
to depict life itself, has long
played out in three dimensions.
Polychromatic wood
sculptures, like this one
made for a church, of
Jesus laid out for burial,
were made even more lifelike
with glass eyes and fingernails
made of bull's horn.
And today we experience
the wildly uncanny feeling
of three-dimensional
realism when
encountering a Duane Hanson
sculpture in an art gallery;
or Ai Weiwei's exquisitely
crafted porcelain sunflower
seeds.
Realism emerges as a
strategy among many, that's
combined with other
approaches and employed
toward a wide variety of ends.
Even before photography,
artists used optical devices
as a painter's aid.
It's long been
suspected that Vermeer
used a mechanism akin
to a camera obscura
to make his paintings.
Contemporary artist,
David Hockney,
has argued that artists
have long presented us
with photographic views,
and the only thing
that happened in
the 19th century
was that chemicals were
invented that allowed
these images to become fixed.
But even so, photography
did change everything.
As soon as it arrived and many
scrambled to patent and profit
from various processes,
artists began
to use it in their practice.
We know Courbet worked
from photographs of nudes
for many of his
most famous works.
We know that Nadar
made this photograph
for the use of artist,
Jean Leon Gerome,
to assist in his process
of painting "Phryne
Before the Areopagus."
The new technology was
harnessed by landscape painters,
including Albert
Bierstadt, who often
worked from stereoscopic
photographs taken
by his brothers.
Photography eventually
became an accepted art form
in its own right.
But from its outset, it's been
in near constant conversation
with painting and other media.
Abstraction would hold sway
for much of the 20th century.
But realism kept playing a part,
appearing at different times,
in different ways, and
for different reasons.
In the late 1960s
artists working primarily
in New York and California
began making paintings
where photographs were
clearly and unabashedly
the primary visual reference.
In 1969, writer and
gallerist, Louis K Meisel,
gave this work the name
Photorealism-- its artists
reproducing photographic
images with astounding detail
with almost hilariously
challenging surfaces
to elaborate and describe.
Like pop art, photorealism
disrupted many people's
expectations about
what art should be,
showing us the often
aggressively unartful stuff
of everyday life, and
acknowledging the invasiveness
of advertising and
consumer culture
in so many parts of American
life after World War II.
While the subjects of
photorealist paintings
aren't usually that
remarkable, the skill
involved in their
reproduction often is.
But like many artists
throughout history,
photorealists aren't
afraid of using tools
to enhance realistic
effects, like using a grid
system to transpose
an image, or enlarging
and transcribing slides or
photos with a projector.
Photography can be a
helpful source for artists--
not just because it
fixes a moment in time
with its particular
play of light,
but also because it shows us
how an expansive and dimensional
world can be organized onto
a defined and two-dimensional
surface.
But that's also a
criticism of some realism.
Is it all technical expertise
and no substance-- just a feat
of robot-like
precision on display?
 I have achieved
verisimilitude.
NARRATOR: A detached,
deadpan feeling
can exude from
photorealism, which
we can credit to
the degree of remove
the camera lens provides, the
consistent treatment of subject
matter across the composition,
and the flat application
of paint.
People are there,
but these are not
necessarily portraits as
much a part of the scene
as a parked car or less.
Photographer Gary
Winogrand once said,
"There is nothing as mysterious
as a fact clearly described."
And that mystery is part
of the ongoing allure
of these pictures.
But while photorealist paintings
are for sure clearly described,
their relationship to
fact is more tenuous.
Photographs, as we well know,
crop, omit, and mislead.
They have selective focus,
adjustable depth of field.
Different kinds of cameras and
film create different effects.
Paintings made from
an ektachrome slide
tend to have a bluer cast,
while Kodachrome skews warmer.
And digital photography can
magnify saturated tones.
And of course, source
images can be manipulated.
Photorealist painters often edit
and combine images with others
to overcome the limitations
of conventional photography.
Dramatic shifts in scale
diverge wildly from real life.
And as technology
has advanced and made
possible digital images of
unprecedented resolution
and size, painters who
use them as sources
offer us views that
are hyper-real,
far surpassing the
capabilities of our human eyes.
When we look at realists'
art, within and outside
of the photorealist tradition,
we know it's not real.
The illusion is
almost never lasting.
But that's exactly
why we like it.
It feels miraculous that
mere earthly art supplies
can be transformed into
images and sculptures that
can even begin to pass as photos
or actual objects in the world.
The finesse of these
works can be virtuosic.
And the time-- oh, the time
and patience it can take
to achieve--
is worthy of our admiration.
But time plays a more
complicated role as well.
Contrasted with the long
and arduous process that
brings the paintings to life
is the near instantaneous
of the source photos' capture.
Then there is the moment in
time when the photo was taken
versus when it was
that the image was
translated to a new medium.
And there's the time of now when
the works are being experienced
and evaluated.
What's every day in
1971 is exotic in 2018.
What looks like real life
in 1987, looks nostalgic--
even alien--
today.
What seems neutral and
inconsequential now,
becomes in the future emblematic
of a time, place, and moment
in technological history.
Realist art has a
trace relationship
to the objects and people
and places it describes--
but an indirect one.
The realness to which it
strives isn't necessarily
the realness of
lived experience,
but the realness of a
physical photograph.
In the process,
these artists have
constructed a new reality--
one we must remember
is not a window,
but an intricate
web we can explore
of images and moments
and acts of translation.
The spread of technology into
so many parts of our lives
has unleashed a torrent
of visual information
that we are left to
navigate and add to.
Images float past our eyes--
some directly from friends--
filtered, doctored, throwback--
some from credentialed sources,
and some completely untethered
from identifying information.
And then there are
the images we capture
and release into the torrent.
Many of us now see
life and anticipate it
through photography.
As artist Tom Blackwell
put it back in 1972,
"Photographic images, movies,
TV, magazines et cetera,
are as important a part of our
reality as actual phenomena.
They strongly affect
our perception
of actual phenomena."
So this torrent of images
is affecting how we see.
And realism helps
remind us of that,
demonstrating that
vision is a process,
and one vulnerable
to many influences.
This kind of art invites
us to take a closer look--
to appreciate how
images hew to life,
and how they diverge from it.
Realism reminds us that we
don't see in two dimensions,
and challenges us to
distinguish real from virtual
in increasingly
advanced environments.
Even when it's
really good, realism
prompts us to
remember that there's
no way to perfectly recreate
any moment, person, place,
or thing.
And yet we still derive
pleasure in this attempt
to fix some bit of
our world in time
as artists and appreciators.
We look closely.
We think in layers
of the opacity
and translucency
and adaptability
of images and a vision.
Realism asks each of us
how we process reality,
how we organize it, and
perhaps, most importantly,
how we share our
reality with others.
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