Hyperrealism denotes a genre of painting and sculpture characterized by its resemblance to high-resolution photography. This artistic movement is widely regarded as an evolution of photorealism, distinguished by the advanced techniques employed in the creation of its paintings and sculptures. Primarily, the term refers to an autonomous art movement and style that emerged in the United States and Europe during the early 1970s. Notable pioneers of the hyperrealism movement include Carole Feuerman, Duane Hanson, and John De Andrea.
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has developed since the early 1970s. Carole Feuerman is the forerunner in the hyperrealism movement along with Duane Hanson and John De Andrea.
History
In 1973, art dealer Isy Brachot introduced the French term hyperréalisme, signifying hyperrealism, as the title for a significant exhibition and its accompanying catalogue at his Brussels gallery. This exhibition predominantly featured American photorealists, including Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Robert Bechtle, and Richard McLean, but also showcased influential European artists such as Domenico Gnoli, Gerhard Richter, Konrad Klapheck, and Roland Delcol. Subsequently, hyperealisme has been adopted by European artists and dealers to categorize painters influenced by the photorealist movement. Contemporary European hyperrealist painters include Gottfried Helnwein, Willem van Veldhuizen, Tjalf Sparnaay, Roger Wittevrongel, and French artists Pierre Barraya, Jacques Bodin, Ronald Bowen, François Bricq, Gérard Schlosser, Jacques Monory, Bernard Rancillac, Gilles Aillaud, and Gérard Fromanger.
Hyperrealism in the early 21st century was established upon the aesthetic foundations of photorealism. American painter Denis Peterson, whose seminal works are widely recognized as an evolution of photorealism, initially employed the term "hyperrealism" to characterize this nascent movement and its associated artists. Graham Thompson observed that "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."
In contrast, hyperrealism diverges from the literal methodology characteristic of traditional late 20th-century photorealist paintings. Hyperrealist artists utilize photographic references to produce renderings that are more definitive and intricately detailed, frequently incorporating narrative and emotive qualities absent in photorealism. Conversely, strict photorealist painters typically replicated photographic images, often omitting or abstracting specific details to preserve a uniform overall pictorial composition. These artists frequently excluded elements of human emotion, political commentary, and narrative content. Evolving from pop art, the photorealistic style was distinctly rigid, precise, and mechanically sharp, emphasizing commonplace, everyday subject matter.
While fundamentally photographic, hyperrealism frequently employs a more nuanced and intricate focus on the depicted subject, rendering it as a vibrant, palpable entity. The objects and scenes within hyperrealist paintings and sculptures are rendered with meticulous detail, aiming to generate an illusion of reality that transcends the original photographic source. This distinction does not imply surrealism, as the illusion constitutes a compelling representation of a simulated reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects, and shadows are portrayed with enhanced clarity and distinctness compared to both the reference photograph and the actual subject.
Hyperrealism is philosophically grounded in Jean Baudrillard's concept of "the simulation of something which never really existed." Consequently, hyperrealist artists construct a fabricated reality, a persuasive illusion derived from a simulation of reality, specifically the digital photograph. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures emerge from the proliferation of extremely high-resolution images generated by digital cameras and viewed on computer screens. Just as photorealism mirrored analog photography, hyperrealism leverages digital imagery, expanding upon it to forge a novel perception of reality. These hyperrealistic artworks present viewers with the illusion of meticulously manipulated high-resolution images.
Style and Methods
The hyperrealist style primarily emphasizes intricate details and subjects. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures transcend mere photographic interpretation or literal depiction of a specific scene or subject. Instead, they incorporate supplementary, frequently subtle, pictorial elements to construct an illusory reality that is either non-existent or imperceptible to the human eye. Moreover, hyperrealist works often integrate emotional, social, cultural, and political thematic components, extending beyond the visual illusion and marking a significant divergence from the more literal approach of traditional photorealism.
Hyperrealist painters and sculptors permit the use of mechanical techniques for image transfer to canvas or mold, such as preliminary drawings, grisaille underpaintings, and direct molding. Artists employ photographic slide or multimedia projectors to cast images onto canvases, and basic methods like gridding are also utilized to maintain precision. Sculptural works frequently involve the direct application of polyesters onto the human body or molds. Achieving hyperrealism necessitates exceptional technical skill and virtuosity to convincingly simulate an artificial reality. Consequently, hyperrealism often integrates and leverages photographic limitations, including depth of field, perspective, and focal range. Furthermore, certain hyperrealist painters, including Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Bert Monroy, and Robert Bechtle, exploit anomalies inherent in digital images, such as fractalization, to underscore their digital provenance.
Themes
The thematic scope encompasses portraits, figurative art, still life, landscapes, cityscapes, and narrative compositions. Contemporary hyperrealism exhibits a greater literal precision in pictorial detail compared to photorealism, often emphasizing social, cultural, or political themes. This approach stands in stark contrast to concurrent photorealism, which consistently avoids photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist artists simultaneously replicate and enhance precise photographic imagery to generate optically persuasive visual illusions of reality, frequently within a social or cultural framework.
Certain hyperrealist artists have critiqued totalitarian regimes and military governments in developing nations through narrative depictions illustrating the enduring legacy of hatred and intolerance. Denis Peterson and Gottfried Helnwein, for instance, portrayed political and cultural manifestations of societal decadence in their artistic output. Peterson's oeuvre specifically addressed diasporas, genocides, and refugee crises. Helnwein created unconventional narrative pieces exploring past, present, and future ramifications of the Holocaust. Their provocative subjects include enigmatic portrayals of genocides, their tragic aftermath, and ideological repercussions. Thematically, these contentious hyperrealist artists assertively challenged the corrupted human condition, employing narrative paintings as a phenomenological medium. These remarkably lifelike paintings serve as a historical commentary on the egregious mistreatment of humanity.
Hyperrealist paintings and sculptures further establish a tangible solidity and physical presence through nuanced lighting and shading techniques. Shapes, forms, and foreground elements in these images often appear to project beyond the canvas's frontal plane; similarly, sculptural details frequently exhibit greater clarity than their natural counterparts. Hyperrealistic images are commonly scaled 10 to 20 times larger than their original photographic references, yet they maintain exceptionally high resolution in color, precision, and detail. Many paintings are executed using an airbrush, with acrylics, oils, or a combination thereof. Ron Mueck's remarkably lifelike sculptures are rendered at scales significantly larger or smaller than life-size, achieving astonishingly convincing detail through the meticulous application of polyester resins and multiple molds. Bert Monroy's digital images, despite appearing as paintings derived from photographs, are entirely computer-generated.
Hyperrealists
References
Taylor, John Russell; Bollaert, Maggie (2009). Exactitude – Hyperrealist Art Today. USA: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0500238639.
- Taylor, John Russell; Bollaert, Maggie (2009). Exactitude – Hyperrealist Art Today. USA: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0500238639.
- Media related to Hyperrealism at Wikimedia Commons
- Hyperrealism artists at the museum of art