HYPER REAL - THE PASSION OF THE REAL IN PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY

At the end of the 1960s, a group of American painters stepped out of the shadows of Abstract Expressionism and turned towards the tradition of painterly realism. Photorealist painters often used the photographic image as a model, but "correcting" the photographs--as Chuck Close did in his portraits--by placing different photos next to each other to give each segment of the picture its own focal point. Photorealists frequently emphasized the precedent of Pop art, and this volume on both Photorealist painting and photography in dialogue with painting (such as William Eggleston and Saul Leiter) opens with Mel Ramos, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol to underline this association. Monumental in scope, and with a wealth of color reproductions, Hyper Realalso assesses works by Richard Artschwager, Thomas Demand, Vincent Desiderio, Rackstraw Downes, Richard Estes, Eric Fischl, Richard Hamilton, Duane Hanson, Jann Haworth, Candida Höfer, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Tracey Moffatt, Gerhard Richter, Stephen Shore, Thomas Ruff, Wayne Thiebaud and many others.