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French language edition published 1973

by E.P.I. Editions Filipacchi,
65, avenue des Champs-filysees, 75008 Paris.
American Edition published 1975
by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
712 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019.
All rights reserved.

Nothing herein may be reproduced in any form

without written permission from the publisher.
Printed in Spain.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-18524.
ISBN: 0-8478-0001-6.

TOUJ^UBIj]
by
Linda Chase
Introduction by Salvador Dali

^-^ NF\)t' Vt)RK

SHARP SYBARITIC REALISM

(Preamble: In 1933, Dali proclaimed that his painting was really hand-made color photography of superfine delirious images of concrete irrationality.)

epoch of intellectual misery we live in,

must express myself in terms of caricature

In this

a street in Rouen.

the Municipal

my

contemporaries can try to understand me. I will therefore start by quoting

my preface for Marcel Duchamp:
so that

The first man who compared a young

woman's cheeks to a rose was, quite obviously,
The second, by repeating it, was
a poet.
possibly an idiot. All the theories of Dada
and Surrealism are constantly being repeated
over and over again: their soft waves have
given birth to innumerable soft objects.

Readymades" cover the

bread fifteen yards long
long This monstrous

engender

A crumb

globe.

is

now

of

fifteen miles

specialization

can

spontaneous phenomena
Dada nor Surrealism would ever

certain

that neither

have had the leisure or the desire to bring

forth.
It

has

already

been forgotten

Dadaism appeared, Tristan Tzara,

that,
its

when

original

Dada
Dada

c'est ceci,
c'est ceci,

Dada
Dada

in

Dadaism

is

During

left at

all.

On

that day, originality will

convulsively

be

by the
if,

making the chocolate grinder, he

had made the Holy Ampulla, the only readyinstead of

made divine that might have been used for

anointing and consecrating him king.
So
Duchamp could have been crowned at
Rheims, and Dali would have asked his permission to paint a picture called, "The King

The moral

all
good faith that its neomore sublime than the art of

enerves

need of the artist.

Marcel Duchamp could have been king

c'est cela,

Praxiteles.

attitude of the

not touching

Readymade

at

High

consists

Subterraneously, the
Readymade has influenced the conscience of
the hyperrealists and has brought them to
paint readymades by hand.
If Vermeer of
Delft or Gerard Dou had lived in 1973, they
would no doubt not have considered it unin

reality.

Duchamp

suitable to paint the interior of an automobile

between Arcachon and Bordeaux)

or the outside of a telephone booth, with all

the reflections involved.
In spite of his

the

(traveling

"Les

also that

the art object created

Speed".

De

believes

and

recalled that

Joan of Arc was

burnt at the stake in Rouen.
At the time, there were only 1 7 people in
Paris who understood Readymades, the very
rare Readymades of Marcel Duchamp. Now
there are 17 million who understand them.
The day that all existing objects are Readymades, there won't be any more Readymades
de Jumieges"

c'est cela,

toute facon, c'est du caca...

This more or less black type of humor is
unknown to the new generation, which

must be

and the Queen Traversed by Nudes

leader, declared in his manifesto:

It

Museum owns

last

war,

Marcel

me of the new interest in the

preparation of excrements, of which the small

talked to

passion for Leibnizian holography, Salvador

At least he has
is more or less an artist.

excretions from the navel are the

Dali

editions.

Well, this same

Salvador Dali went this summer from Port
Lligat to Barcelona in a nice enough automobile, and as a sybarite he enjoyed all the
reflections of the nickel inside the car to

replied that I'd like

"deluxe"
to own an

authentic excretion of Raphael's navel. Today

in Verona a very well known pop artist sells
the excrements of

artists,

presented

in

very

sophisticated containers, as a luxury product.

As soon as Duchamp realized that he had

sowed the wind with his youthful ideas
until none were left, he very aristocratically
withdrew from this game and prophesied
that other young men would specialize in the
chess game of contemporary art; then he
started to play chess.

The chocolate grinder by Marcel Duchamp is

sublime when one knows that he chose it in

a certain artistic sensitivity.

such an extent that upon arriving in Barcelona,

he noticed that not once had he looked out of

window at the countryside of the

province of Gerona, which is the one he loves
best in the world. The miracle was entirely
due to the hyperrealist rnovement, thanks to
which we are now beginning to enjoy
sybaritically the modern world that surrounds
the

us and that everyone distrusts.

Since that

trip,

have drawn the

line

between the domain of

sybaritic realism

and that of

pathetic romanticism.
Sybaritic classicism
Estes - Gerard Dou

Pathetic romanticism
Rothko - Rembrandt

Information

Tendentious information
That which one imagines

That which one knows

Myth

Reality

That which

That which

is

Levi intimus

not

Levi promiscuities

That to which we belong

That which belongs to us

That to which we do not belong

That which does not belong to us,
in this world
The world without states
Messianism

The Fatherland
Patriotism

In the lyric theatre, the two romantic operas which

which can be opposed one to the other are:

Norma by

is

The world
The universe
The cosmos

The province
The street
The chair

offer the

Bellini

Tristan

Norma from

maximum

and Isolde by Wagner

the beginning the genetic code, the

existence in flesh and blood of the two illegitimate
children of a Roman father.

Tristan
aphrodisiac.

Norma

Tristan and Isolde die of languor.

In

dies in perfect health and, before dying, declares

war on nothing

less

than

Rome

his country sings in full voice

sublime, and he follows her in death
saying that their love is only beginning.

Norma

In
is

Norma

the

first

In the forest of the Druids,

booth...

why

is

While Tristan

Norma,

like a

telephone

Tristan

love

potion,

legendary

devoured by

dies

his

memories.

is

the defeat of love.

innumerable reflections of the modern

the telephone booths are like the mesozoa, a
creature that has scarcely 20 cells, which permit the
collection of information about the cell in a remarkably
reduced content, the urine of the octopus. Herein may
lie the clues to
the development of multi-cellular
organisms.
In the forest of

city,

a Catalan esthete, tired of the impenetrable

cried out in front of a hyperrealist painting of

impressive painting showing

Today

Tristan ends pianissimo.

steps leading to the sacrifice, which

sublime, are the first steps of a triumphal march.

This

Isolde

is

Norma ends fortissimo.

Musically

and

itself.

The Roman betraying

that

In

of contrasts and

six identical

modern

forest

art:

of modern art,
have seen a most

of isms

Recon!.

telephone booths.

two extremes of hyperrealism are, on the one side Estes, on the other Morley,
between the two: Eddy, Salt, Parrish, MacLean, Mahaffey, Kacere, Staiger, Goings, Blackwell,
Kleeman. Morley will probably try to kill hyperrealism with a technique which he himself
calls brutal, in order to return to the most hyperexagerrated realism.
Estes is on the road
to perfection and probably a very Gerard-Douesque stereoscopy.
Bravo for Norma!
the

Bravo for the octopuses

Bravo for the telephone booth
Bravo for Morley!
Bravo for Estes!
Bravo, above all, for Salvador Dali!
The Telephone Booth

Amid

the innumerable chaotic reflections of the

city, telephone booths are parallelepipeds whose four exterior

transparent rectangles are living Leibnizian mirrors of an ultra-local universe, enclosing within them a
living informative biology.

strictly

In a universe of virtual images, each telephone booth seems a parallelepipedal holograph of our visible reality,
an existential mesozoa. Each telephone booth is like the Perpignan railway station, it is a legi intimus, it is a Father-

>t^_
(On

finishing this article,

y
I

hear that the autopsy of Bellini's body revealed an infection of

the kidneys!)

Salvador Dali
Translated June 1975 by Albert Field

DON EDDY

Summer Shoes (1972)

NEW
REALISM
At a time when a

New

rebirth of figurative

seemed impossible,

painting

Realism has burst

art world as an exciting,

upon the
viable,

controversial

and quintessential^ modern

art form.
With his use
of the photograph,
the New Realist painter

combines the tools

of painting with the tools
of technology to record
the objects and icons of the

modern world.
Rejecting the emotional subjectivity
of earlier realist painting,
he reports what is.
The
paintings present visual fact without

comment on
The

New

the pictorial subject.

like all of us,

Realist,

is

media's

new way

child.

He has forged

of seeing

which

derives from the emotional distance

of media and employs the wealth
of precise and concentrated data
available through the camera.
In
the paintings of Richard Estes,
Chuck Close, Don Eddy, Ralph
Goings, Richard McLean, Tom
Blackwell, John Salt, and
other New Realists, we are
presented with an easily accessible and
visual image which
has been robbed of its emotional
content.
Emotional distance and
visual accuracy become
equivalents, and reality is rendered
with a purity which is both
super-real and unreal at once, a purity
we have come to accept
as real through the ubiquity of the
photographic image.
New Realism is not a movement
familiar

the formal sense.

a manifesto: many
of these artists have never met.
They come from diverse parts
or the country
Sacramento,
in
It

does not have

San Francisco, Denver, New York

but they have absorbed the same
influences and are concerned
with translating these influences
into paint in similar ways.

Perhaps

it

can best be

called a sensibility, a stance

which arises from the relationship
between the artist and his subject.
It is a relationship
of distance, both emotional,
and through his use of the
photograph, actual, but also
of total and painstaking
involvement in terms of
the accurate rendering of form,
light and colour.

Several

NEW REALISM

stylistic manifestations
are identified with New Realism,
such as the cold and objective painting

style of Goings,

McLean and Eddy,

the clean hard paint surface,

the absence of visual brush strokes,
and the attention to detail. But not all
New Realists demonstrate all of
The paintings of
these qualities.
Richard Artschwager, probably the
first

New

preserve

Realist,

the grainy textural character

of cheap newsprint and
John Salt's paintings have
a soft hazy quality which results
from his particular method of
using the airbrush.
Richard

Estes and Tom Blackweil both achieve

an uncanny precision with the use of
traditional painterly techniques.
We have come to expect cars,
trucks, motorcycles, hot dog
stands and plate glass
windows as the subject matter

New

for

Realist

painting,

HAROLD GREGOR

Illinois

Barn

aerie* II

Route 66 near Lincoln (1972)

yet

McLean's horses and Close's

faces remain in the mainstream
of

New

Realist painting

because the decisive factor

is the way the subject is seen and not
the subject matter

itself.

Morley, whose brutally

precise renditions of travel
posters and postcard scenes
qualify him as an early
New Realist, painted
these upside down and in
grids square by square, deliberately
obliterating the image in order
to paint it.
He thereby created
the maximum distance between
himself and the subject matter and
disavowed any connection with

Malcolm

the old realist tradition.

It
was his intention to create

RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER

The Tree

AUDREY FLACK

Sunset over Florence

painting which, when reproduced,

would be indistinguishable
from the original source material,

thus

letting

art

defeat

itself

in

Duchamp. Morley
has since moved away from
the spirit of

the precisionistic appearance

of his earlier works toward a more
expressionistic use of paint while
continuing the use of the grid process.
The white border, used by Morley
and also by John Clem Clarke,
is another method of creating
distance, of calling the viewer's
attention to the fact that he is
looking at a painting of a
reproduction of the real thing.
Although the New Realist painter

has no conscious message, although

he is deliberately trying to paint
without a message, this attitude and
the methods used to achieve the goal
of unemotional content become
statements in themselves. Often the
subject matter adds to the unconscious
message. When aspects of the urban
and suburban landscape are
portrayed, they are not only
being recorded, but are also
being used to reflect a distance
that has become part of our
lives.
Looking at Estes'
subway car or Goings' hamburger
stand, we become aware of the
alienation that exists
between us and the environment
we have created. Eddy's
cars are often seen through fences

JOHN SALT

Crashed Bonn

and showroom windows.

McLean's horses and Blackwell's
motorcycles and cars
are painted in show situations.
Sexually connotive objects of power,
they are neutralized by
their status as fetishistic objects.
All New Realist painting deals
with a secondhand, recycled reality;
reality recycled first by
the photograph and again by the
artist.

Photography

is

at

the heart of the movement.

Studio
realists such as Philip Pearlstein,
Alfred Leslie and
Lowell Nesbitt can be seen
as precursors of New Realism in their
incorporation of photographic
influences; the use of photographic
cropping and frontality.
Like the

photo-realists they are concerned with

maintaining the awareness of the two
dimensional plane while creating the
But
three dimensional illusion.
these artists are firmly
tied to the traditions of
studio painting which the New Realist

painter rejects.
Kanovitz, another precursor
of New Realism, has used free standing
figures in his optical illusion
realism to bring the picture
plane into actual space. A kind
of play on trompe I'ceil painting,
his work is about the paradox
between what appears to be there
and what is actually there, and the
excitement of his work exists in
In his
the tension between the two.
Six Pinned to a Wall he manages

Howard

maintain this tension without

breaking the two dimensional picture
plane and in painting photographs as
photographs he aligns himself closely

to

with the interests of the New Realists.

result of the New Realists'
rejection of studio realism is the
almost total absence of the figure in
New Realist painting, and when figures
do appear, as in the work of
Robert Bechtle, Paul Staiger and
Ron Kleeman, they are incorporated
into the scene as merely another
aspect of the milieu. The New Realist
painter is not concerned with the
artificial arranging of figures in space
or of objects in a still
life,
but in abstracting from
the arrangement of things in the real
world.
He uses the photograph, often
quite consciously, to separate himself
from the concerns of classical
representational painting.
John Salt observed that photographs
"made it easier to get rid of other
painters' influence," and
that the air brush served the
same purpose. This awareness
that the photograph works to
liberate the artist from older forms
of realism was reiterated
by Tom Blackwell: "The camera
distorts according to the mechanics
of its lenses not according to classical
conventions of perspective or the
needs of pictorial representation."
In the New Realist sculpture of Duane
Hanson and John DeAndrea the

One

technique of molding directly from

life has a similar effect, as it
eliminates personal emotional
choices in the transferring
of the object into sculpture
and helps disassociate the artist
from past representational
sculpture by eliminating the possibility
of heroic scale and distortions of
the body according to classical ideals.
The New Realists also use
the photograph to create distance
between themselves and the subject
matter.
The photograph transfers
the image from a three dimensional

two dimensional plane in a

way that precludes decisions by
the artist which might be based
on emotional or psychological
preferences.
"You would tend
to emphasize one thing over
another, to distort the image
according to your feelings,"
observed Salt, describing what
would happen if he
tried to paint his auto wrecks
without the use of photographs.
to

Thus, Lowell Nesbitt,

Pearlstein

photographs,

New

who

unlike

and Leslie does use

Realist

is

nevertheless not a

because he uses the

photograph primarily as a source of

information, and although his
compositions reflect the influence of
the photograph, he interprets the
information as he transforms it upon
the canvas, placing primary importance
on the artist's personal individualistic
vision rather than on precise
and objective rendition

from the subject matter

and to free themselves from
artistic conventions of the past,
also represents a philosophical
it

new way

outlook; a

fronts or automobiles in parking

The same paintings
lots.
could not be painted without

photographs. The artist

envisions the painting in photographic
terms and the photographic
visualization

is
part of
the idea of the painting.

Photography has changed

way of seeing and the

our

Realists

changes.
as real," Richard Estes observed.
"Media has to affect the
way you see things. Even
if
you don't watch TV you're affected
by it." Tom Blackwell takes
idea even further:

this

phenomena." New Realists

are concerned not merely
with painting from a
photograph or with painting
as realistically as a photograph,
but with redefining painting
in relation to the photograph.
For
of actual

it
is a new tool and a new
source of visual information.
"I
can't see how
could do one
without the other," said Estes,
describing the symbiotic relationship
between the painting and the
photograph. "Or maybe could do the
photograph without the painting
but
couldn't do the
painting without the photograph.

them

The idea

is
involved with the
photograph, the creation of it almost,

and the painting is just the method of

transmitting it.
couldn't
really carry it far enough
with photography though.
You have a
I

it

In

and

slide

little
if

And

Basically

and

it

I'm

making

painting

just using these other

things to do it."
Estes actually takes considerable
liberty with the photograph.
He takes
several photographs of an area
to get more information and this
information is incorporated
into the painting.
Although
the painting will be based on

one photograph, he

is

not

trying to capture the particular

moment

time and space the way the camera

would record it. He eliminates people
even though they appear in the
photographs, "because they are too
distracting," and eliminates
garbage as well because he says
in

he can't make

gain distance

that's nothing.

up and have prints made

loses something. It has no surface.
painting you have more control.

you blow

really

to

"Today

photographic images, movies, TV,

newspapers are as important as actual
phenomena. They affect our perception

of the subject matter.

it

New

registering these
"We accept the photograph

are

The photograph should not be seen,

however, as merely a device. Although
the artists may be aware that
they are using

of seeing.

The photograph is not incidental,

it is essential.
The New Realist painter
is not using the photograph
to do something which
could be done another way.
It
is not merely that it would be awkward
to stand in the street and paint store

my

part.

look right.
"It's
deficiency on
really try to make things
it

technical
I

look dirty.
But it's funny because
even in the photograph

CHRIS CROSS Motor

(1972)

doesn't look as dirty as

really is.
It's not that
try to make it look like that,

of dark and light caused by

excessive sunlight, McLean's

what happens."
Estes' paintings have a

increasingly abstract.
Clarke, having developed
a method of realist painting using
stencils to recreate
both volume and light,
is now employing
the technique
to reproduce, in large scale,
photographs of abstract
brush strokes.
His
use of the photograph as source
material and his dedication to accurate
reproduction of the material are so
closely aligned with New Realist
concerns that he could almost be
called an abstract New
Realist.
Stephen Posen is also
dealing with abstraction,
but is much more concerned
with illusion of depth than Clarke.

it

W REALISM

it

it's

most recent work becomes

just

the world
of the

purity

This is true of
Realist paintings of
funky reality, partly because the artists
are not trying to expressionistically
capture the grit and grime
and partly because of their stylistic
emphasis on precision and
cleanliness of paint
surface.
As Estes' comments
on garbage indicate, the use
of the photograph does not preclude
a desire to create a satisfying painting
lacks.

New

all

abstract terms.
Estes feels that the

in

In

fact,

New Realist sensibility

related to the influence of abstract
painting.
"An abstract
way of looking at things
without any comment or
coldness of
is

commitment."
a

realist

many

He has always been

however, whereas

painter,

or the other

began as abstract

New

Realists

painters.

New

of references to
abstract painting in the compositions

Realism

is

full

of Salt, Cottingham, Blackwell

Even the apparent
and others.
frontality of Estes or Goings
is

composed and succeeds

Reflections
an abstract sense.
are often used as abstract
elements, as are the fences and
In
parking lot lines in Eddy's work.
the extreme fragmentation
in

John Clem

Posen's trompe

I'ceil

style

distinguishes him from Clarke and

relates his work to the New Realists
in spite of the fact that he does
not use photographs.
His method
of creating full scale
sculptures of boxes and fabric
which he then renders faithfully
in paint gives him the kind of distance
from the subject that is achieved
through the use of the
photograph. He too is dealing
with a second hand reality.
Since
he is not using a recognizable
image but an abstraction which
possesses no inherent emotional
content, he does not have the problem

of emotionally

charged choices

transferring the three dimensional

object to the two dimensional plane.
He eliminates problems of
distortion and focus through
the use of a fork lift
in

device which allows him to paint

each area at eye level.
Posen's work illustrates, as
that New Realist
painting is informed and
influenced not only by abstract
art but by conceptual and process
work as well. Often the artist is
primarily concerned with the subject
matter as a vehicle
for exploring visual perceptions.
This
is true of Chuck Close who denies
any humanist intention in his use of
the face.
He represents, in its
purest or most extreme form,
the use of the photograph
The photograph acts
as subject.
as a structure within which
there are certain absolutes.
"My paintings are a result
of certain self-imposed restrictions,"

does Morley's,

Close

said.

"No matter how

interesting a shape is, if it isn't

the shape in the photograph it is
wrong.
am trying to get
I

my hand

to move out of those

personal cliche art marks."
The
head functions as an extremely
familiar type of subject
and thus eliminates

for

him the possibility

of taking unobserved liberties.

would
a lazy person and

"I'm

tend to let myself get by

If
were
with things.
painting a tree and the colour
was slightly off, or the texture
of the bark, who would know? Who
cares enough about trees to
People are important to
notice?
other people so they're important
I

to

me."

He uses photographs

of his

friends rather than anonymous

subjects for the same
"Likeness
reason.
work.
It
is by-product of the way
would bother me a lot more if did a
lousy job of translating
I

the photograph of someone

knew than if it were a stranger."
Close goes to a great deal
of trouble to take the kind of
photograph which contains the
specific information that concerns
him.
He is interested in blur,
which he feels the human eye
eliminates but the camera
allows us to see and explore.
Questions of focus are
not decided because of relative
importance of the area but
because of the focal length of the
I

camera

lens.

He wants

to

treat the face as a map

with uniformly interesting

topography. The forehead, the eyes,

the cheek, the chin are
all of equal interest.
Closes' use of the three colour
separation which he paints layer upon
layer, reproducing the colour
photograph like a colour laboratory
rather than like a traditional
puts him on the
outer limits of the reproduction
painter,

ALFRED LESLIE

Portrait of Robert Scoll

M.

MORLEY

U.S. Marine at Valley Forge

of the photograph among

New Realist painters. But other

GUY JOHNSON

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MALCOLM MOKLKY
New

Regatla

Realists are also interested

in

of focus, its relationship to

spatial perceptions, and in issues
that arise in reproducing blurred
slightly out

areas.

;ssf-*

cheque painting (1972).

reproducing the photograph; in

dealing as painters with questions

and

a ooo

of focus

Mahaffey employs photographic

focus in his aerial cityscapes

as an equation for distance,
while Blackwell often paints
out of focus areas in the extreme
foreground so that the focus

becomes a different kind of spatial

equation.
Blackwell also
deals with the problem
of translating photographic
light refraction into paint.

Reflections as they are perceived

by the eye and as they are

steel

registered

Kacere has

photographically are

obviously a major concern of New

Realists.
Motorcycles,
cars
and trucks are used as subject
matter by Blackwell, Eddy, Goings

and also by Ron Kleeman and

David Parrish, not only because
ot their ubiquity on the American
scene but also because of the
painters' fascination with their shiny
painted and chrome
surfaces.
Estes is obviously
attracted to the reflectiveness of
plate glass windows as well as to
the chrome surfaces in his subway
car and diner paintings.
John
Rummelhoff is concerned with reflective
surfaces such as chrome and stainless

kitchen
a

John
concern
plays on the folds

fixtures.

similar

with light as it
of his often sleezy satin fabrics.
Although included in the movement
because of their coolness and the
precision of their paint
styles, Robert Cottingham and
John Kacere are not concerned with
the kind of photographic detail

often identified with

Realism.
Cottingham

New
strives

for

dramatic composition and simplifies

the subject matter, leaving out

and bolts
the photographs.
Kacere, in his "idealization" of female
anatomy, paints flesh lacking
hair, dimples or other details
rust spots, stains

that

appear

in

11

possible the New Realist use

photograph.
But the
New Realist sensibility is not

EW REALISM

of the

Pop sensibility. As Estes remarked,

"The trouble with Pop Art is that
it made too much comment.
Playing
an intellectual game type
thing.
Once you get the message
you lose interest."
Pop used banal subject matter
as banal.
The New Realist painter
does not tell the viewer how to feel
about the subject, he merely
affirms that it exists and that
it
is worth looking at
because it exists. The artist's
efforts (often many months
of work on one painting) imbue
a

liSA

DON EDDY

MBl

the things he paints with a

new significance, but they are
not lauded or loathed, only given
careful consideration.
Their reality is irrefutable.
Within the bounds of this
comment of no comment, there

Private Parking

spectrum of feeling
the artist's attitude
towards his subject.
In some
cases the exquisiteness
of paint becomes a sort of fetishistic
love (Going's Air Flow Trailer, Estes'
Subway Car, Blackwell's
Triple Carburetor GTO) while
McLean's paintings cast
is

a certain

in

a chill that seems definitely

negative.
The beautiful

horses are no more

absurd owners.
Close's studied avoidance of
the "hot" content of his

And

alive than the

CLEM CLARKE

FRANZ GERTSCH

Larfv Gorf/va

which he apparently considers

blemishes, but which
reality would dictate
in the scale in which he works.
There is a division between

New

Realists who
paintings
about how the camera sees
and those who are interested
in using photography to
make paintings about how
the eye sees.
Goings, McLean and
Estes all employ an overall sharp
focus.
For Estes this is part of
his non-committal translation of
"I don't
the subject matter.
want to have some things
in focus and others out of
focus because it makes it too
specific what you are supposed
to look at in a painting and

those

are making

avoid saying that.

Everything is in focus because
want you to look at it all."
For the painters who are translating
the photograph exactly, including out
of focus areas, their literalness
in relation to photographic focus
try to

becomes

part of the objectivity

of their statement.

These

differences make it clear that

the photograph as a tool
contains many variables even among
those painters who are interested
in exact rendition of subject
matter.
"Some people think that
if
you use a photograph only one
painting can be made.
But as many
different paintings can be made from a

photograph as from

real

life,"

Salntes Maries de

la

Mer

observed Close.

One
out

issues that comes

Close's statements

of the
in

about the New Realists' work

is the use of the photograph
as a discipline.
New Realism
is

to a certain extent a

reaction to the freedom of

abstraction, a freedom within
which it has become increasingly
difficult to avoid cliche

and

repetition.

offers

The photograph

discipline within
which the New Realist feels free
a

explore paint while

same time offering
new areas to explore. The
precise rendition of subject
matter divested of emotion
is another aspect of this
discipline, for inherent in
recognizable subject matter
is connotation.
The New Realist
to

at the

painter is interested in
denotation, and the process of
stripping the object of its
emotional connotations and dealing
with its concreteness creates
a desirable tension, infusing
the best work with a dynamic
yet controlled energy.
The New Realists acknowledge a debt
to Pop Art for opening areas
of banal subject matter and
making it possible to paint
figuratively without

reference to

the past, to old masters or to academic

considerations.
The Pop use
of advertising and secondary
source material helped to make

paintings combined with

the scale of the heads
becomes a kind of aggression.
Kleeman, whose early work combined
sexual anatomy with machine

imagery, is still concerned,

although less obviously, with
the sexual connotations of his
racing cars.

Ben Schonzeit is more concerned with

the connotations of what he paints
than most of the New Realists.
He
often juxtaposes objects in unusual
ways, i.e. Buffalo Bill
riding through a display of kitschy
key chains and

pill

boxes

in

his

painting Buffalo Bill.

Scale
is also used suggestively rather than
realistically

in

this

painting.

He

paints with an air brush to achieve

an effect of soft focus,
and the focus in the painting
does not necessarily reflect
the focus in the photograph
used as a source.
Schonzeit develops an interesting
tension between the illusion
of the reality of the image
and the softness of it,
and the soft focus often lends
an eerie and haunting quality to the
objects he paints.
Audrey Flack paints subject

matter that has become

kitsch with the intention of
"recreating images that

have been destroyed by the

over exposure resulting from the
constant reproduction of photographs."
Through the use of zoom and close up
lenses she captures details not
perceived by the naked eye and
renders them faithfully in paint. With

the camera she is "using the tools

of the media to resurrect images

and ideas destroyed by media."

her paintings of cathedrals
art works, such as
Michelangelo's David, and
in her madonnas with their gaudy dress
and glass tear drops, she is asking
the viewer to relate to the individual
In

and famous

concreteness of the subject, to cut

through the haze of our culturally
inherited attitudes towards
it and see it as it really is.
In this sense she could be said
to

be making a more specific

statement than most of the

New

Realists, but her incredibly precise

rendition of the subject matter through

the use of the photograph relates
her work closely to theirs.
There is a fascinating and
frightening madness in
painting colour separations layer
upon layer, in building

complete sculptures and then

laboriously copying them in paint,
in meticulously rendering every
flower on a Rose Bowl float
or every bolt on an engine, which is

New

part of the

"The

lucidity that

torture

his

at

the

Realist statement.
was to constitute

same time

crowns

his victory..."

(Albert

Camus, The Myth

Though

of Sisyphus)

cold and noncommital,

New Realism is also heroic,
not in the academic artistic
sense, but in the existential
absurdist sense.
It
chooses
to do slowly and laboriously
what media can do quickly and
effortlessly and thus to affirm
it

is

human effort is valid and that

human effort alters the product.

that

and the photograph are

Almost inadvertently the
artist balances the colour, improves
the composition through cropping,
and makes it work as painting.
Reality

purified.

This
irony,

is

the central
the philosophical

New

The

tension

grasps
and communicates the camera's
message, but is not content with the
camera's product.
He affirms the

of

Realism.

artist

integrity of the object while

yearning toward perfection.
The painting achieves a Sartrean
purity; the hard beauty which
"would make people ashamed
of their existence" (Jean-Paul Sartre,
Nausea): the steely cold beauty

beyond pain idealized

in
Richard Brautigan's Trout
Fishing in America. The
triumph of skill becomes a triumph
of spirit as well.

quotations from the artists come

from interviews conducted by the
All

author with Ted McBurnett in the fall

and winter 1971-72. These interviews
appear in the November 1972
issue of Art in America.

LINDA CHASE

CHRIS CROSS

North Star Bakery.

13

^H'

t>

RICHARD ESTES
in Evanston, Illinois.
Studied at the Chicago Art Institute 1952-1956.
New York.
Residence
First exhibition 1968 at the Allen
Stone Gallery, New York.

Born 1936

Cafeteria.

14

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HL'

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Richard Estes

16

Store Front (1971) 17" X 19 1/3".

<
,
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Richard Estes

Helenes Florist (1971) 17" x 23 2/4".

27

DAVID

PARRISH
Bom 1939 in
Birmingham, Alabama.
Studied at the
University of Alabama.
First exhibition 1962
with a group at the
Ringling Museum of

Art, Sarasota.

Motorcycle V (1971)
15 1/4" X 23".
19

20

MALCOLM MORLEY
Born 1931

in London.
Studied at the Royal College of Art, London.
Exhibition in 1964 at the Kornblee Gallery.

Castle.

21

ROBERT COTTINGHAM
22

Born 1935 in Brooklyn.

Graduated in advertising art.
Teaches at the Art Center College of Design,
in Los Angeles, California where he lives.
First exhibition

1968.

Signs (1971).

23

"^l

SWf?

:r-

>'

Bra

JOHN SALT
Born 1937
Lives

in

Birmingham (England).

New

York.
Studied at the Slade School
of Fine Arts, London.
First exhibition 1965 at the Ikon Gallery,
Birmingham.
in

Electra I

20 3/4" X 25 114".
25

it

/
X
aHF

.# -

f!
l/i

"+

*
DUANE HANSON
Born 1925

in Alexandria, Minnesota.
Studied at Cranbrook Academy of
Bloomfiels Hills, Michigan.

Lives

in

New

York.

First exhibition
in

Art,

1946 with a group

Minneapolis.

Motorcycle accident (1969).

27

S-:
<t*/

w^\
V

:'J:
I

.-

'^^

/
"^^

V^gC-r^^

28

Q:

S Ssci

Duane Hanson: Bowery

Derelicts

(1967)

29

Duane Hanson

30

Artist Seated (1972)

JOHN de ANDREA
Born 1941 in Denver, Colorado.
Graduated from the University of Colorado in 1965.
Taught drawing and painting at the University of
New Mexico 1956-1958.
Residence
Denver.
:

First

exhibition

1970.

Arden Ardenson and Nora Murphy (1972) 13 3/4"x36 3/4"x25 2/3".

31

RICHARD McLEAN
Born 1934 in Hoquiam, Washington.
Teaches at San Francisco State College,
California.
First

32

personal exhibition 1957 at the Lucien Labaudt

San Francisco.

Gallery,

^)ft

jmm*-*t*

Persimmon Hill (1972) 23" x

23".

^^flfc*

*"***

*^

sm^^

\ltkt**<*m

Char's Powderface (1969) 18 1/2" X 22 1/2'

3<

RI0HT1

BLOCK

STOPLIGHT

HAROLD GREGOR
Born 1929.
Lives in Bloomington, Illinois.
Has exhibited since 1963 at Purdue
University.

? --L^

AV4*?
Illinois

Barn

series

Steve's cafe (1972) 16 1/2"

x 25

1/2".

JOHN KACERE
Born 1920
Has taught
in

New

in
in

Walker, Iowa.
Canada, in Mexico,

York.

exhibition 1954 at the

Zabriskie Gallery, New York.
First

Light purple panties

yellow dress, rear view
(1972) 23 1/4" x 31".

37

John Kacere.

38

39

RALPH GOINGS
Bom

40

1928 in Corning, California.

Studied at California College of Arts.
First exhibition 1960 in Sacramento
where he lives.

Airstream (1970) 23 1/4" x 32 3/4".

41

w
**

KUIF

Ralph Goings:
Interior (1972)
14" x 20".

42

BEN
SCHONZEIT
Born 1942

in Brooklyn.
Studied at Cooper Union,
New York City, New York.
First exhibition 1965 with
a group in Washington, D.C.

Herb's frames (1971)

27 3/4" x 37".

45

:-fP

'I^U&r^ff^-v^'^-'y- At'

ROBERT BECHTLE
Born 1932

in

62 Chevy (1970) 17 1/2" x 20 1/4".

San Francisco.

Studied at California College of Arts and Crafts

and at the University of California where he
teaches.
First exhibition 1959 at the San Francisco

Museum

of Art.

49

..

,: (.'

DON EDDY
Born 1944 in Long Beach, California.
Studied at the University of HawaT.
First exhibition 1967 with a group in Honolulu.
Cadillac Showroom
18 1/2" x 23 1/4".

Window

(1972)
51

Don Eddy Wrecking Yard VI

:

52

(1971) 25 1/2"

x 25 1/2

'rfiw4

TZMT

Don Eddy: Wrecking Yard

II (1971) 18 1/2"

x 25 1/2'

53

AUDREY FLACK
Born 1931 in New York.
Graduated from Yale School of Fine Arts.
Lives

54

in

New

York.

First exhibition

1-959 at the

Roko

Gallery.

David (1971) 25 1/2" x 17 3/4".

JOHN RUMMELHOFF
Born 1942

in

Minnesota.
in 1964 at the

First exhibition
Art,

Museum

Sink (1972).

of

Montgomery, Alabama.
55

CHUCK CLOSE
Born 1940

in

Monroe, Washington.

First exhibition

Massachusetts.

56

1967 at the University of

Susan (1972) 38 3/4" x 34 3/4".

John (1971-72) 39" x

35'

Paper and

Wood

(1972) 13 3/4" x 9 1/4".

HOWARD KANOVITZ
Born 1929 in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Studied at Providence College, Rhode Island.
First exhibition 1962 at the Stable Gallery,
New York.

58

'WH^Mf-M

',.

Projected Street Scene (1971) 51 3/4" x 31".

59

Howard Kanovitz

60

Element

of

Prose (1972) 19 2/3" x 12 1/2".

Howard Kanovitz

New Sky

with Andre (1972) 31" x 23".

61

NOEL MAHAFFEY
Born 1944

in Saint Augustine, Florida.

Philadelphia.
Studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts (1962-1966) where he exhibited for the
first time.

Lives

62

in

Saint-Louis, Missouri (1971) 8 1/2"

x 27 3/4

Noel Mahaffey

Atlanta, Georgia. 16 1/4"

64

21".

jiJtitaPi

V=^s

TOM BLACKWELL
Born 1938.
First exhibition

1961

at the

Roy Parsons

Gallery.

Gary's Hustler {1971) 18 3/4" x 37".

67

Tom

Blackwell: Triple Carburettor

GTO

(1972) 18 3/4"

37".

Motorcycle (1971).

69

EL SEGUNDQ

PAUL STAIGER
Born 1941

in

Portland, Oregon.

Studied at Northwestern University and at the

University of Chicago.
First exhibition 1969 at the Michael Walls Gallery,

San Francisco.
El Segundo (1972) 32 1/4" x 38 1/2".

71

JOHN CLEM CLARKE

Born 1937
Studied

in

Ben (Oregon).
Oregon and Mexico.
in

First exhibition
at the

72

1967 with a group

New York.

Witney Museum,

Judgement

of Paris

IV (1969) 84 1/4" x

137".

73

RON KLEEMAN
in Bay City, Michigan.
Studied at the University of Michigan and at the
College of Architecture and Design.

Born 1937

First exhibition

Contemporary

1971
Art,

at the

Museum

of

Chicago.

Spritespit (1971) 18 1/2"

x 23 1/4".

We

express our gratitude to

Collectors and Galleries
that have kindly lent us their support,
among them:
all

Mr and Mrs Robert Kogod

Carrol Janis
Ivan C. Karp

Mr and Mrs

Sidney Lewis
Merril

Berman

Barry Morrison
Richard Brown Baker
Galerie Frangois Petit
Galerie de Gestlo
Galerie des 4 mouvements
Allan Stone Gallery
Fischer Fine Art Ltd
OK Harris

Hundred Acres
Warren Benedek Gallery
French and Company
Meisel Galery
Leo Castelli Gallery
Bykert Gallery

Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Noah Goldowsky Gallery
Waddel Gallery
as well as the photographers

New York
Dudley Gray
Malcolm Varon, New York
Eric Pollitzer,

Ralph

B.

Quinke, Kassel
andX...

7.50

raMUMffiMU
Linda Chase

With an Introduction by Salvador

Dali

This book presents the era of hyperRalph Goings, Richard Estes,

realism:

Chuck Close,

Tom

Blackwell, and

many

Works by

these artists who are

at the same time pioneers and masters,
lavishly illustrate these pages.
Linda
others.

Chase relates the latest adventure of

art, and Salvador Dali has
provided an introduction.
Hyperrealism is neither a movement nor
a school.
As the natural offspring of
our super-industrialized society, hyperrealism utilizes the traditional methods
figurative

of painting to desanctify it.

Contrary to the realist painter,

the

hyperrealist does not appear, at first, to

impose his personality on reality. He

rather

hides

behind

the

represented

object, he carves actuality out of reality.

But, Ly n rurious turn of the objects

towards the painter, each work inspite
of itself and inspite of the artistpoints
to its creator. In a world where everyis
questioned,
attacked,
and
thing
debunked, where every aspect of the
environment appears in all its bareness,
hyperrealism records the saga of the
motorcycle, the drugstore, the silo, and
sex such as served up by the implacable
daily press.

"Every telephone box," says Salvador

holograph
our visible reality, an existential
mesozoa. Each telephone resembles the
station at Perpignan, it is a legi intimus
Well, in this
It is one's home country."
country chat has turned surreal by force
of reality, everybody can, by turning the
pages o f this book, freely carve out their
own part of the dream.
Dali, "is the parallelepipedical

of

76 pages,

96
37

illustrations with
in color.

Jacket illustration

John Kacere
Light purple panties yellow dress, rear view.
1972.

ISBN: 0-8478-0000-