Photorealism Art: Gallery of Artists
Realism, Radical Realism, Sharp-Focus Realism, Super-Realism, New Realism, Hyperrealism
Las Vegas and Southern Nevada Art & Artists' Profiles

"Photorealism is the genre of painting resembling a photograph, most recently seen in the splinter hyperrealism art movement. However, the term is primarily applied to paintings from the American photorealism art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"As a full-fledged art movement, photorealism evolved from POP art up in the late 1960s and early 1970s in America (where it was also sometimes called superrealism, new realism or sharp focus realism) and was dominated by painters. Photorealists very consciously take their cues from photographic images, often working very systematically from photographic slide projections onto canvases or using grid techniques to preserve accuracy. The resulting images are often direct copies of the original photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery and color that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs.

"20th century photorealism can be contrasted with the similarly literal style found in trompe l'oeil paintings of the 19th century. However, trompe l'oeil paintings tended to be carefully designed, very shallow-space still-lifes, employing illusionistic devices such as the use of shadows to cause small objects to appear to exist above the surface of the painting. (Trompe l'oeil literally means "fool the eye.") The photorealism movement moved beyond this illusionism to tackle deeper spatial representations (e.g. urban landscapes) and took on much more varied and dynamic subject matter."

According to Marion Boddy-Evans, of about.com, photorealism, as an art movement, gained its prominence in New York and the west coast during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Marion describes the photorealistic genre as "...characterised by the meticulously detailed, realistic depiction of objects, and technical virtuosity of the artists." Marion traces the origin of Photorealism to a reaction against Surrealism and Pop Art.