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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.
Do you make really cool things and want
to share them with the world?
Check out Wix.com if you're looking
to make your own website for any number of reasons.
We'd like to thank Wix for supporting PBS Digital Studios.
Wix is a platform that allows you
to build a personalized website to showcase your art,
promote your business, set up an online shop,
or test out new ideas.
Their technology allows you to create something unique,
no matter your skill level, with beautifully designed templates
and all-in-one management.
If you'd like to check it, out you can go
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