![]() ![]() Today, a number of figural artists - such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper - are making art that uses the human body as its subject.īecause figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. ![]() Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects. While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals - all portrayed with realism. A Close Look at Photorealist Artįigurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. On 1stDibs, the collection of Photorealist art includes work by Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, Charles Bell and others. The meaning of the term, which began for Meisel as “a superficial way of defining and promoting a group of painters,” evolved with time, and the core group of Photorealists slowly expanded to include younger artists who traded Rolleiflexes for 60-megapixel cameras, using advanced digital technology to create paintings that transcend the detail of conventional photographs. “He took a picture of himself in the mirror with the car outside and then painted it. ![]() “ Robert Bechtle invented Photorealism, in 1963,” says veteran art dealer Louis Meisel. At its best, Photorealism is a perpetually paused tug-of-war between the sacred and the profane, the general and the specific, the record and the object. “Much Photorealist painting has the vacuity of proportion and intent of an idiot-savant, long on look and short on personal timbre,” John Arthur wrote (rather admiringly) in the catalogue essay for Realism/Photorealism, a 1980 exhibition at the Philbrook Museum of Art, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The virtues of the “photo” in Photorealist art - infused as they are with dazzling qualities that are easily blurred in reproduction - are as elusive as they are allusive. ![]() The bland and the garish alike flicker between crystal-clear reality and dreamy illusion, inviting the viewer to contemplate a single moment rather than igniting a story. It’s the stuff of yellowing snapshots and fugitive memories. Whether gritty or gleaming, the subject matter favored by Photorealists is instantly, if vaguely, familiar. A direct challenge to Abstract Expressionism’s subjectivity and gestural vigor, Photorealism was informed by the Pop predilection for representational imagery, popular iconography and tools, like projectors and airbrushes, borrowed from the worlds of commercial art and design. ![]()
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