Realism
Realism emerged in nineteenth-century France, depicting ordinary people, rural labor, and contemporary life without idealization or heroic subjects.
Painting Movement
Photorealism
Photorealism emerged in the United States in the late 1960s, as painters used photographs to create precisely detailed images of everyday scenes.
Photorealism quick facts
Its painters worked from photographic references, often emphasizing reflections, enlarged detail, sharp focus, and the visual qualities of ordinary scenes.
| Origin | United States, with early activity in New York and California |
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| Approximate period | Late 1960s–1970s, with artists continuing to work afterward |
| Classification | A modern painting movement using photographic reference, distinct from the related term Hyperrealism. |
| Historical context | Photography, consumer imagery, and mass media supplied source material and visual conventions for painters. |
| Common subjects | City storefronts, cars, reflected light, portraits, consumer objects, and still lifes |
| Defining characteristics | Careful reproduction of photographic detail and momentary framing, often with sharp focus and reflections; some artists combine or alter source images. |
| Paint types | Oil paint in works by Bechtle and Estes; acrylic paint in paintings by Close, Flack, and Goings. |
| Painting surfaces | Canvas for the five cited works; photographs were references, not the physical painting surface. |
| Painting methods | Artists used varied processes, including gridding, airbrushing, and careful brush painting; not every painter used projection. Photographs supplied references, while painters made choices about scale, surface, and composition. |
| Famous painters | Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Audrey Flack, Robert Bechtle, and Ralph Goings |
| Representative works | Bechtle's '61 Pontiac (1968–69), Close's Phil (1969), and Flack's Queen (1976) |
Sources: Guggenheim: Photorealism, Guggenheim: Richard Estes, and Whitney: Chuck Close, Whitney: Bechtle's oil painting, Guggenheim: Estes's oil painting, Whitney: Close's acrylic portrait, and Smithsonian American Art Museum: Flack's acrylic still life.
Paint types in Photorealism
Photorealist painters used oil and acrylic to translate photographic references into carefully constructed scenes, choosing different supports and methods.
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Oil paint
Robert Bechtle's '61 Pontiac (1968–69) is oil on canvas, based on family photographs of a station wagon and its owners. He enlarged the photographic outline onto canvas before painting its colors and details. Richard Estes used oil on canvas for The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1979), carefully organizing reflections and architectural surfaces in an urban scene.
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Acrylic paint
Chuck Close's Phil (1969), acrylic and graphite on canvas, enlarged a portrait photograph using a grid and airbrushes. Audrey Flack's Queen (1976), acrylic on canvas, turns a dense arrangement of cards, jewelry, flowers, and other objects into a symbolic still life. Ralph Goings also used acrylic on canvas for Jeep 40 809 B (Safway Jeep) (1969).
Sources: Whitney: Bechtle's oil '61 Pontiac, Guggenheim: Estes's oil painting, Whitney: Close's acrylic Phil, Smithsonian American Art Museum: Flack's Queen, and Smithsonian American Art Museum: Goings's acrylic Jeep.
Famous painters from Photorealism
Estes studied city reflections, Close enlarged photographic portraits, and Flack used detailed still lifes to combine realism with personal symbolism.
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Richard Estes
Estes painted city storefronts and reflective windows from photographic references, carefully rebuilding distorted reflections as crisp images. His Photorealist scenes make glass, signage, and street geometry the subject, while their precise finish invites viewers to compare painting with the camera's framing.
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Chuck Close
Close enlarged portrait photographs into grids of small marks, building a face from a distance while revealing its construction up close. His Photorealist method turns the camera image into a labor-intensive painting process, making scale and mark-making part of the subject.
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Audrey Flack
Flack used photographs to compose tightly arranged still lifes filled with reflective objects, cosmetics, and symbolic details. Her Photorealist paintings reproduce surface effects with precision, yet their carefully chosen objects also connect the style to questions of memory, time, and representation.
Sources: Guggenheim: Estes's The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Whitney: Close's Phil; The Met: Flack's Macarena of Miracles.
Related painting movements
Photorealism returned to recognizable subjects amid abstraction and Pop Art, while photographic references gave it a distinct process and visual approach.
Pop Art
Pop Art drew on advertising, comic books, celebrities, and everyday products, bringing mass-media imagery into painting in Britain and the United States.
Precisionism
Precisionism emerged in the United States around 1920, using crisp geometry and smooth surfaces to depict factories, buildings, and everyday objects.