Thank you for your report!
We have received your report and it is currently under investigation by a forum moderator.
Photo realism.
Welcome to the forum.
Here you can discuss all things art with like-minded artists, join regular painting challenges, ask questions, buy and sell art materials and much more.
Make sure you sign in or register to join the discussions.
Hang on Studio Wall
This is a Studio member-only feature!
Join our Studio membership and save your favourite Painters Online content, from gallery artwork to step-by-step guides, to your own online mood boards. Create your go-to place for inspiration and learning. Plus, members can also enjoy a range of exciting features including monthly art videos and a digital magazine library.
If you are already a Studio member, simply login to your account.
Not a Studio member? Why not try our free 30-day trial - no commitment, no credit card required
Message
Posted
There is an incredibly clever painting on the gallery at the moment. Extremely skilfull and very clever., it has a couple of f comments from some of us here on the forum.
I am not trying to be a clever clogs or even controversial. In a million years I would never have these skills.
But in my very humble opinion I cannot for the life of me see " why" the last post on it by Beatrice Cloake made me smile " I thought it was a photograph" which is exactly what I thought.
Is this the future of art ? Super realism !
Posted
I am in your camp on this one, Sylvia, as I struggle to see the point of photo realistic paintings. When I view them I am conscious that I am viewing a work that has probably taken hours of skillful and painstaking work, but it strangely leaves me cold. I can admire them, but I feel I am admiring skill rather than artistry.
I think in the end what puts me off is the perfectness of photo realistic work. They are actually rather scary in my book.
Posted
Can't find it, and I've gone back 8 pages; not easy to respond if it's not clear which painting you mean.
On the whole and in theory, I agree that photographic painting can be a bit arid - but I need a clue to which one you meant.... I've not found anything so far I'd have taken for a photograph.
Posted
Ah - found it now.
Now so far as I'm concerned, here's where theory and practice diverge; in theory, I am not touched or impressed by hyper-realistic paintings; in practice, I like this one - it's a witty painting, and leaving aside the immense skill with which it's been painted, I find it an attractive and intriguing image. I wouldn't like to paint like this (the picture is Still Water, for anyone still wondering what we're wittering on about), and the artist has another highly detailed painting which I also wouldn't have wanted to paint, but as a viewer rather than a practitioner I very much enjoyed the pictures.
These things are always going to be matters of opinion, when you get beyond pure technique; obviously the technical ability is beyond question here but that alone won't make you appreciate a painting. I have a bit of a block so far as Salvador Dalí is concerned, for example - he had enormous technical skills, but I found his paintings cold, frequently misogynistic and cruel: maybe I know a bit too much about him as a man. I am possibly in a very small minority here, though. Who knows whether the majority will agree with Sylvia on this one? The painting has certainly generated comments - so it's already succeeded on one (quite important) level.
With you in theory, then, Sylvia - but in practice, I think this is the age-old conundrum: why do we like a particular painting, why do we respond to it? I like Kyffin Williams, Henry Fuseli, John Piper: I'm decidedly not keen on Dalí and Matisse..... in music, I love Bruckner, and just tolerate Mahler .... Why? Gawd alone knows, because I don't....
I DID react a little against this painting when I first saw it, but then a closer look revealed its depths. It's no criticism of you that you're uneasy with it, incidentally; it shows you think about what you're looking at - there's not enough of that about in general! (Although I think we do, on the whole, here.)
Posted
Robert, I might not be right about the exact painting, so don't rely too much on my hint. As for photo-realism, I am reminded of Brian Sewell's comment after visiting the modern section of the National Portrait Gallery. He said about the photo-realistic portraits on display there - 'Where's the artistry? I don't want to look at a whole lot of painted photographs'. Have to agree, I'm afraid.
Posted
The worst criticism, intended as the highest praise, I've ever heard or read is "it looks just like a photograph". If it really DOES look just like a photograph - you might as well have photographed what you wanted to show in the first place and saved yourself an awful lot of work. We had a commenter on here some while ago who employed this back-handed praise (Thea might know whom I mean; she was not an admirer of her work!) and I'm afraid I found such comments crass; even though they were doubtless meant well.
This painting (identified by Sylvia's reference to Bea Cloake's comment on it) rather obviously divides opinion but I'm afraid I said it once and I'll say it again - I like it! Wouldn't want to paint that way, and don't; and if I had the cash to spare and space on my wall, I'd much rather have one of Rupert Cordeux's watercolours. I'm not going to convert Syd, who is not a man easily swayed, but then I'm not trying to convert anybody. Just agreeing in general that hyper-realism is not for me, while admitting that I like this example of it. Just call me capricious..... whimsical ..... dammit, plain weird, I don't mind...
Where I do understand what people are saying is in the sense that this sort of photographic exactitude appears to be increasingly popular - I think it's one of the trends the USA sent over to us, shortly after growing out of it themselves (have you taken a look at some US painters' oils of their varied and exciting landscape lately? There's fabulous work going on); in general, even 9 times out of 10, I have no time for it nor much respect for it; and the thought that people might think this is what real painting is all about does shiver my timbers. Impressionism is not, however, the only way to paint; the loose approach is not for everyone; my only fear is that this polar opposite approach to painting might become the new orthodoxy that we shall need to get over and grow out of.
The occasional example, the occasional artist devoted to hyper-realism is something we can all live with - but the lack of obvious passion in so much of it, the clinical, cold accuracy which reminds you rather of the mortuary slab, is not a trend I'd like to see people follow. Even so - room here for all kinds of artists and all kinds of art: at least it's not the Bob Ross school of painting the same damn' picture 1,000 times ..... (I'm not obsessed with poor old Bob, really I'm not...).
Anyway, I must leave you to it for now: I've got a lovely big parcel from Jackson's to play with (and no, Syd, I won't be painting bathroom fittings with any of the contents. Rest assured.).
Posted
Not wishing to flog this to death, but I wonder what you made of the Dutch school (schools, more accurately) of painters in the 1600s - Vermeer, de Hooch, van Huysum. It's not a very exact comparison I'm making here, is it? But some of the flower paintings in particular were extremely accurate, and you could argue hyper-realistic. Does the fact that they were pre-camera make the difference, or is there something more ...?
I don't have any clear answer to this - in fact I don't think I have ANY answer to it; it just struck me that they were the ultra-realists of their day (even bearing in mind that van Huysum deliberately painted flowers that wouldn't have been in bloom at the same time - something to do with indicating the passage of time, corruption in the rose, all that sort of thing).
There's one very obvious difference of course - those painters exploited the mark, the shape in paint left by the brush; hyper-realists of our time seem to do their best to disguise the fact that a brush came anywhere near their paintings; although I don't think that's true of the painting we've been discussing, if you look at his flowers.
Still and all - your own paintings and drawings are very clearly the work of a human hand, you can see the emotion and drive in the marks you make: I can see why the cerebral, unemotional type of painting doesn't appeal to you, it's the very antithesis of what you do. I have emotional moments, chiefly when I lose my temper as I've been doing just lately ... but on the whole I'm more introspective, and I think that's why I rather like the Still Water painting; and perhaps also why I like the Dutch school, which has been described as dull, safe, and bourgeois! (Which is I think is cobblers, although it was certainly painted to appeal to stolid Dutch merchants, who commissioned a lot of it.)
What we need here is an art historian, perhaps.... Anyway, you've opened a can of interestingly wriggly little worms..
Posted
I can see both sides of the argument, but I must admit, if I want realism nowadays I take a photograph, the Old Masters could not do that. From a personal point of view, with my love of the mountains and the outdoors, I hate to see a painting of a mountainside, a crag or a moor in which you can see every crack, blade of grass etc. When you are out there walking climbing or just looking around, you do not see those details unless you specifically home in on something close to or with binos. I prefere something that gives me the feeling of the place or thing, something were you can feel some soul.
Posted
That's actually a very good point - even those with good vision, which some of us lack, don't see every blessed blade of grass when we look at a scene: we see detail in that at which we look directly, but the rest is peripheral: this is why a hyper-realist approach to landscape can actually look less "real", though both are illusions of course, than a much looser painting - the latter is closer to the way we actually see. Hyper-realism which is closer to the effect you'll get with a camera than to what we see with the actual human eye is thus not so realistic after all.
This will be more true of landscape and seascape than of intimate studies of course, but even so there's a truth here on which those drawn to "realism" might ponder.