Hyperrealism (painting)
Encyclopedia
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph
Photograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...

. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

 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 2000s.

History

Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 art dealer Isy Brachot coined the French word Hyperréalisme, meaning Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

, as the title of a major exhibition and catalogue at his gallery in Brussels
City of Brussels
The City of Brussels is the largest municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region, and the official capital of Belgium by law....

 in 1973. The exhibition was dominated by such American Photorealists as Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings
Ralph Goings is an American painter closely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s...

, Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

, Don Eddy
Don Eddy
Don Eddy is an American painter who gained initial fame as a photorealist; but his recent works have veered into the realm of metaphysics.In the 1970s, Eddy's works paid homage to cars and the urban cityscape...

, Robert Bechtle
Robert Bechtle
Robert Bechtle is an American painter, born in San Francisco, California, on May 14, 1932. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts, now the California College of the Arts, in Oakland, California.Except for his military service...

 and Richard McLean; but it included such influential European artists as Gnoli, Richter, Klapheck and Delcol. Since then, Hyperealisme has been used by European artists and dealers to apply to painters influenced by the Photorealists.

Early 21st century Hyperrealism was founded on the aesthetic principles of Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

. American painter Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

, whose pioneering works are universally viewed as an offshoot of Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

, first used "Hyperrealism" to apply to the new movement and its splinter group of artists. Graham Thompson wrote "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
Richard Estes
Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters...

, Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

, Audrey Flack
Audrey Flack
Audrey Flack is an American photorealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor.Flack studied fine arts in New York from 1948 to 1953. She earned a graduate degree and an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University. She studied art history at...

, and Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

 often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."

However, Hyperrealism is contrasted with the literal approach found in traditional photorealist paintings of the late 20th century. Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that often, unlike Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

, is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Strict Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, omitting or abstracting certain finite detail to maintain a consistent over-all pictorial design. They often omitted human emotion, political value, and narrative elements. Since it evolved from Pop Art, the photorealistic style of painting was uniquely tight, precise, and sharply mechanical with an emphasis on mundane, everyday imagery.

Hyperrealism, although photographic in essence, often entails a softer, much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living, tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyperrealism paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a reality not seen in the original photo. That is not to say they're surreal
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

, as the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects, and shadows appear clearer and more distinct than the reference photo or even the actual subject itself.

Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...

, ”the simulation of something which never really existed.” As such, Hyperrealists create a false reality, a convincing illusion based on a simulation of reality, the digital photograph
Digital photography
Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...

. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are an outgrowth of extremely high-resolution images produced by digital cameras and displayed on computers. As Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

 emulated analog photography
Analog photography
Analog photography is a commonly used term for photography that uses a progressively changing recording medium, which may be either chemical process based or electronic ....

, Hyperrealism uses digital imagery and expands on it to create a new sense of reality. Hyperrealistic paintings and sculptures confront the viewer with the illusion of manipulated high-resolution images, though more meticulous.

Style and methods

The Hyperrealist style focuses much more of its emphasis on details and the subjects. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are not strict interpretations of photographs, nor are they literal illustrations of a particular scene or subject. Instead, they utilize additional, often subtle, pictorial elements to create the illusion of a reality which in fact either does not exist or cannot be seen by the human eye. Furthermore, they may incorporate emotional, social, cultural and political thematic elements as an extension of the painted visual illusion; a distinct departure from the older and considerably more literal school of Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

.

Hyperrealist painters and sculptors make allowances for some mechanical means of transferring images to the canvas or mold, including preliminary drawings or grisaille
Grisaille
Grisaille is a term for painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome, usually in shades of grey. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles in fact include a slightly wider colour range, like the Andrea del Sarto fresco...

 underpainting
Underpainting
In art, an underpainting is an initial layer of paint applied to a ground, which serves as a base for subsequent layers of paint. Underpaintings are often monochromatic and help to define colour values for later painting...

s and molds. Photographic slide projections or multi media projectors are used to project images onto canvases and rudimentary techniques such as gridding may also be used to ensure accuracy. Sculptures utilize polyesters applied directly onto the human body or mold. Hyperrealism requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate a false reality. As such, Hyperrealism incorporates and often capitalizes upon photographic limitations such as depth of field, perspective and range of focus. Anomalies found in digital images, such as fractalization, are also exploited to emphasize their digital origins by some Hyperrealist painters, such as Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

, Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

, Bert Monroy
Bert Monroy
Bert Monroy is an American artist best known for his skill in using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.Monroy is considered by most PixelPerfect viewers to be one of the pioneers of digital art. Much of his work is photorealistic...

 and Robert Bechtle
Robert Bechtle
Robert Bechtle is an American painter, born in San Francisco, California, on May 14, 1932. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts, now the California College of the Arts, in Oakland, California.Except for his military service...

.

Themes

Subject matter ranges from portraits, figurative art, still life, landscapes, cityscapes and narrative scenes. The more recent hyperrealist style is much more literal than Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

 as to exact pictorial detail with an emphasis on social, cultural or political themes. This also is in stark contrast to the newer concurrent Photorealism
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

 with its continued avoidance of photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context.

Some hyperrealists have exposed totalitarian regimes and third world military governments through their narrative depictions of the legacy of hatred and intolerance. Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

, Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...

 and Latif Maulan depicted political and cultural deviations of societal decadence in their work. Peterson
Denis Peterson
Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

's work focused on diaspora
Diaspora
A diaspora is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of...

s, genocides and refugees. Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...

 developed unconventionally narrative work that centered around past, present and future deviations of the Holocaust. Maulan’s work is primarily a critique of society’s apparent disregard for the helpless, the needy and the disenfranchised. Provocative subjects include enigmatic imagery of genocides, their tragic aftermath and the ideological consequences. Thematically, these controversial hyperreal artists aggressively confronted the corrupted human condition through narrative paintings as a phenomenological medium. These lifelike paintings are an historical commentary on the grotesque mistreatment of human beings.

Hyperreal paintings and sculptures further create a tangible solidity and physical presence through subtle lighting and shading effects. Shapes, forms and areas closest to the forefront of the image visually appear beyond the frontal plane of the canvas; and in the case of sculptures, details have more clarity than in nature. Hyperrealistic images are typically 10 to 20 times the size of the original photographic reference source, yet retain an extremely high resolution in color, precision and detail. Many of the paintings are achieved with an airbrush
Airbrush
An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that sprays various media including ink and dye, but most often paint by a process of nebulization. Spray guns developed from the airbrush and are still considered a type of airbrush.-History:...

, using acrylics, oils or a combination of both. Ron Mueck
Ron Mueck
Ronald "Ron" Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom.-Early work:Ron Mueck began his career working on the Australian children's television program Shirl's Neighbourhood...

’s lifelike sculptures are scaled much larger or smaller than life and finished in incredibly convincing detail through the meticulous use of polyester resins and multiple molds. Bert Monroy
Bert Monroy
Bert Monroy is an American artist best known for his skill in using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.Monroy is considered by most PixelPerfect viewers to be one of the pioneers of digital art. Much of his work is photorealistic...

’s digital images appear to be actual paintings taken from photographs, yet they are fully created on computers.

Hyperrealists

  • Robert Bechtle
    Robert Bechtle
    Robert Bechtle is an American painter, born in San Francisco, California, on May 14, 1932. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and Crafts, now the California College of the Arts, in Oakland, California.Except for his military service...

  • Charles Bell
    Charles Bell (painter)
    Charles Bell was an American Photorealist and Hyperrealist, known primarily for his large scale still lifes.With a subject matter primarily of vintage toys, pinball machines, gumball machines, and dolls and action figures , Bell sought to bring pictorial majesty and wonder to the mundane...

  • Jacques Bodin
    Jacques Bodin
    Jacques Bodin is a French hyperrealist painter who has shown his hyperreal paintings in Paris and Milan. His work accentuates photographic deviations from reality to create a hyperrealism reference...

  • Claudio Bravo
    Claudio Bravo (artist)
    Claudio Bravo , was a Chilean hyperrealist painter. He has lived and worked in Tangier, Morocco since 1972....

  • Juan Francisco Casas
    Juan Francisco Casas
    Juan Francisco Casas is a Spanish artist.- Work and Biography :Casas paints large size oil canvases and blue ballpen drawings where he reproduces images he takes with his camera....

  • Hilo Chen
    Hilo Chen
    Hilo Chen is a Taiwanese-American painter. He is best known for his photorealistic paintings of the female figure. He is represented by Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in New York where he currently lives and works. His work is in major museum collections throughout the world including the Solomon R...

  • Chuck Close
    Chuck Close
    Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...

  • Boris Dragojevic
    Boris Dragojević
    Boris Dragojević graduated at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade...

  • Don Eddy
    Don Eddy
    Don Eddy is an American painter who gained initial fame as a photorealist; but his recent works have veered into the realm of metaphysics.In the 1970s, Eddy's works paid homage to cars and the urban cityscape...

  • Gilles Paul Esnault
  • Richard Estes
    Richard Estes
    Richard Estes is an American artist, best known for his photorealist paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters...

  • Carole Feuerman
    Carole Feuerman
    Carole A. Feuerman is an American artist and hyper-realistic sculptor. She currently lives and works in New York, New York. Feuerman is most known for her resin sculptures painted in oil, but she also utilizes other media such as bronze and stone...

  • Franz Gertsch
    Franz Gertsch
    Franz Gertsch is a Swiss painter known for his large format hyperrealistic portraits.Gertsch was born 1930 in Mörigen, Switzerland. Between 1947 and 1952 he studied with Max von Mühlenen and Hans Schwarzenbach in Bern. In 1972, he took part in the documenta 5 in Kassel. Franz Gertsch's...

  • Duane Hanson
    Duane Hanson
    Duane Hanson was an American artist based in South Florida but born in Minnesota, a sculptor known for his lifecast realistic works of people, cast in various materials, including polyester resin, fibreglass, Bondo and bronze...

  • John De Andrea
  • Gottfried Helnwein
    Gottfried Helnwein
    Gottfried Helnwein is an Austrian-Irish fine artist, painter, photographer, installation and performance artist.-Work:Helnwein studied at the University of Visual Art in Vienna...

  • Antonio López
    Antonio López García
    Antonio López García is a Spanish painter and sculptor, known for his realistic style. He is criticized by some art critics for neo-academism, but praised by others, like Robert Hughes, who consider him a master realist. His style sometimes is deemed hyperrealistic...

  • Ian Hornak
    Ian Hornak
    Ian Hornak was an American draughtsman, painter and printmaker associated with the Hyperrealist and Photorealist art movements.-Biography:...

  • Mark Jenkins
    Mark Jenkins
    Mark Jenkins is an American artist most widely known for the street installations he creates using box sealing tape. In addition to creating art, he also teaches his sculpture techniques through workshops in cities he visits...

  • Howard Kanovitz
    Howard Kanovitz
    Howard Kanovitz was a pioneering painter in the Photorealist and Hyperrealist Movements, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in response to the abstract art movement. - Life :...

  • David Kassan
    David Kassan
    David Jon Kassan is a contemporary American painter best known for his life-size realist portraits. The paintings combine figurative subjects with abstract backgrounds or “tromp l’oeil texture studies,” reportedly inspired by Franz Kline and Robert Rauschenberg...

  • Sebastian Kruger
    Sebastian Kruger
    Sebastian Krüger is a German artist. Sebastian Krüger was born in Hamelin in 1963. After studying free painting...

  • Andrey Lekarski
    Andrey Lekarski
    Andrey Lekarski is a French-Bulgarian painter and sculptor born in 1940 in Sofia , living in Paris.- Biography :Second son of general Krum Lekarski and Nadezhda Lekarska, born on December 2, 1940 in Sofia . From 1954 to 1959 he studied at the School of Visual Arts in Moscow. In 1962 he enrolled at...

  • Nestor Leynes
    Nestor Leynes
    Nestor Garcia Leynes is a Filipino hyperrealistic painter. Leynes is regarded as one of the leaders of the "Magic Realist" movement of the Philippines.-Biography:...

  • Jorge Melicio
    Jorge Melício
    Jorge Melício is a Portuguese sculptor. He was born in Angola in 1957 and has lived in Lisbon since he was seven years of age.-Biography:...

  • Malcolm Morley
    Malcolm Morley
    Malcolm Morley is an English artist now living in the United States. He is best known as a photorealist.-Early life:Morley was born in north London. He had a troubled childhood, and did not discover art until serving a three-year stint in Wormwood Scrubs prison...

  • Bert Monroy
    Bert Monroy
    Bert Monroy is an American artist best known for his skill in using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.Monroy is considered by most PixelPerfect viewers to be one of the pioneers of digital art. Much of his work is photorealistic...

  • Ron Mueck
    Ron Mueck
    Ronald "Ron" Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom.-Early work:Ron Mueck began his career working on the Australian children's television program Shirl's Neighbourhood...

  • Robert Neffson
    Robert Neffson
    Robert Neffson is an American painter currently known for his street scenes of various cities around the world, as well as his early still lifes and figure paintings.-Life:...

  • Jerry Ott
    Jerry Ott
    Jerry Duane Ott is an American artist born in 1947.He is best-known for his photorealism work and creative use of painting surfaces. His latest technical development are paintings wrapped across two and three dimensional surfaces. They range from drawings a few inches wide to sculptural assemblages...

  • Denis Peterson
    Denis Peterson
    Denis Peterson is an American hyperrealist painter. He is a hyperrealist painter whose photorealist works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Butler Institute of American Art, Tate Modern, Springville Museum of Art, Corcoran MPA and Max Hutchinson Gallery...

  • Patricia Piccinini
    Patricia Piccinini
    Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist and hyperrealist sculptor. Her art work came to prominence in Australia in the late 1990s. In 2003 she was selected as the artist to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale....

  • Terry Rodgers
    Terry Rodgers
    Terry Rodgers is an American figurative painter known for his large scale canvases that focus on portraying contemporary body politics. He was born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in Washington, D.C., He graduated cum laude from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1969, with a major in Fine Arts...

  • Alicia St. Rose
    Alicia St. Rose
    Alicia St. Rose is an American pastel painter best known for utilizing photorealistic techniques to achieve heightened light, shadow and texture in a variety of subjects. She enhances photographic qualities in each of her paintings, achieving a hyperreal appearance.St...

  • Zeljko Srdic
    Zeljko Srdic
    Zeljko "Z" Srdic is a contemporary hyperrealist artist and comic book artist. Most of his subjects are marine life, wild life and nature, and celebrity portraits. He uses magnifying glass and needle when creating his paintings.-Style:...

  • Suzana Stojanovic
    Suzana Stojanovic
    Suzana Stojanović Suza is a contemporary Serbian Hyperrealist painter. She was born in Vranje, a small town in southern Serbia. Her first artistic phase began in 1988. During this period her paintings and other works were seen in various artistic exhibitions...

  • Dragan Malesevic Tapi
    Dragan Malesevic Tapi
    Dragan Malesevic Tapi was one of the leading painters of Serbian hyperrealism style. By vocation, he was an economist.-Life:...

  • Paul Thek
    Paul Thek
    Paul Thek was an American painter and, later, sculptor and installation artist. Born in Brooklyn, he studied locally, at the Art Students League and the Pratt Institute. In 1951 he entered the Cooper Union....

  • Glennray Tutor
    Glennray Tutor
    Glennray Tutor is an American painter who is known for his photorealistic paintings. He is considered to be part of the Photorealism art movement. His paintings are immersed with bright colors, nostalgic items, metaphor, and with a complete focus on detail...

  • Alison Van Pelt
    Alison Van Pelt
    Alison Van Pelt is an American painter. Trained in Los Angeles and Florence, Van Pelt is established as a contemporary artist whose work is informed by expressionism, minimalism and pop art.-Biography:...

  • Willem van Veldhuizen
    Willem van Veldhuizen
    Willem van Veldhuizen is a Dutch painter, known for his photorealism and hyperrealism paintings of his museum interiors.- Work :Willem van Veldhuizen was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and took his studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy from 1972 tot 1977 together with artists like Frank...

  • Paul John Wonner
  • Eric Zener
    Eric Zener
    Eric Zener is an American photorealist artist best known for figure paintings of lone subjects, often in or about swimming pools.-Biography:...

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