American painter Richard Estes has made a career out of fooling the eye. His canvaseslook like photographs — but they're not.
"You can't see my paintings in reproduction," the 82-year-old artist says. That's because, in reproduction, the paintings — especially his New York cityscapes from the late 1960s — look like photos. He's called a photo-realist, or hyper-realist — an intense observer of the built environment. But he doesn't paint the view from his apartment window.
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ReplyDeletePrior to Estes,an artist painted scenes in Mexico and New Mexico that were impossible to discern from a photograph.Estes must have spent countless hours doing this.
ReplyDeletePhoto realism has been around for a very long time. A similar technique is called trompe l'oeil used to fool the eye in mostly still lifes, 19thC fruit paintings and earlier, etc. I own only two photo realistic paintings in my over two thousand pieces of collected original art. The only give away in photo realism is the miniscule brush strokes, only visible under strong magnification and intense light to refract those strokes. From a foot or more away the paintings appear to be photographs and many dealers lucky enough to pick them up for a look, pass them by thinking just that it has to be a photograph. Dealers also bypass many great pieces of original art, because they just can't believe that 1. the art can be real 2. that the possibility exists of just stumbling upon a painting worth tens of thousands or more 3. that it has to be a fake. 4. or that they lack the experience/expertise to recognise it at all. 5. a lack of belief in oneself. 6. and then the last most important piece of the puzzle, putting your money where your mouth is. Most dealers will not go the distance because they're unsure of the investment because they've either been burned $$$ or fear getting burned. Because they never took their time to study and/or memorize the subtle nuances in comparable objects of merit/art, they lose the prize. It's all in the details and the best way of learning those details, are by your mistakes which cost you dearly. Tens of thousands of $$$ over a lifetime. Art's a fun game and value is secondary to newly acquired ownership. At an auction there are only two kinds of people, a whole lot of losers and one winner. When it's important, I know where I am going to stand at the end, even before it starts. If I let the item pass, there had to have been a reason. Would I discuss that reason? It took me decades to learn, my answer is No! Every auctioneer on delmarva and/or any person/dealer who buys art in a serious way, can tell you in one word, my name.
ReplyDelete12:32 Well now that we have been told how brilliant you are and how art can be so $$$ and a waste of your time unless you are brilliant let me add one note. Every artist began somewhere. Every artist was a novice at one point. If we all failed to purchased art due to not having years of wisdom that you profess to have all the artists in the world would starve...well.... more than most are already. Art is to the senses what love is to the heart. Follow your heart.
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