Instead of screeching about “holy shit I thought it was a photo,” have a look at some really fantastic hyperrealism and be educated that it exists, people do it, and it’s pretty cool.
Lee Price, Roberto Bernardi, Luigi Benedicenti, Pedro Campos, Jason de Graaf, Denis Peterson, Jeremy Geddes, Gottfried Helnwein
There are many many more amazing realism artists out there. Start with Caravaggio and keep going. :)
its impressive but …whats the point? save that one with the upside down guy this could have been done jus as del with a camera……so what does this technique contribute artistically?
Oh god, I love this question.
The point is to take the time to do it. The point is to see everything and to draw all of what you see and ONLY what you see. A camera is not a drawing. A camera records a moment in a moment. With hyperrealism, human eyes have to acknowledge every single detail—even the most mundane—in order to paint it, and that can take hours and days. No detail is given less attention than any other detail. Every single inch of every single one of these paintings is as important as any other—because the artist decided it should be. The artist has made that choice for you.
The point is that it’s not a photograph.
When photography was born they said it was the end of painting. Cause, like the question above pointed out: why would you need a painting, which takes more time and capital to produce, when (roughly) the same thing can be achieved with a camera— along with the supposed “objectivity” of the newer medium?
But then there was Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, and all the artistic styles that followed. Styles which focused on form. Which highlighted lines, and brushstrokes, and played with color, perspective. When you see a van Gogh, or a Picasso, or a Matisse, you know you are looking at a painting. Painting moved away from mimesis. In some sense, a way of asserting itself as an independent and still-relevant art form. How then are we supposed to make sense of Photorealism? And Hyperrealism, which splintered from that tradition?
What the OP pointed out is the important thing: the point is that it’s not a photograph. Important because -realisms would always rest their case against photography. These paintings are wonderful and awe-inspiring in their own right, yes, but I would wager that a huge reason for that would be purely because “holy shit this is NOT a photo!” The appreciation is from knowing that these are paintings, but that you probably would not have known that unless it was pointed out to you. And since a lot of artists also work with mundane subject matter, all the more does the style transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
And so instead of dismissing it as just another one in the millions upon millions of photographs that barrage us daily, hyperrealist (and photorealist, superrealist, etc.) paintings make us look again. They ask us to look again. And in looking, we go back to taking note of the form, and we contemplate. That is what hyperrealism artistically contributes: a prolonged aesthetic engagement with the work of art.
This is all so interesting to learn about. I really like the last picture.