Hyperrealism

also: Hyperréalisme · Hyper-realism

movement genre style c. 1970-present United States Europe

Hyperrealism grew out of Photorealism in the early 1970s, when the Brussels dealer Isy Brachot titled a landmark 1973 exhibition and catalogue hyperréalisme. Where photorealists coolly imitated the photographic image, hyperrealists use photographs as raw material for something more definitive: paintings and sculptures in which textures, lighting and shadows appear clearer than the photograph - or the reality - they came from. Working from high-resolution sources with airbrush, acrylic and oil, painters such as Chuck Close, Gottfried Helnwein and Denis Peterson - the first to apply the term to the new movement - built narrative, emotive and often political content into their illusionism. Sculptors like Duane Hanson, John De Andrea and Ron Mueck cast the human figure in uncanny, sometimes unsettling detail and scale. Rooted in ideas of simulation, it remains one of the most publicly popular strands of contemporary art.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)
The Tribuna of the Uffizi (Zoffany)Public domain (credit: Johann Zoffany) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Photographically exact rendering that surpasses the source photo in clarity of texture, surface and light
  • Soft, complex focus and heightened detail creating an illusion of reality beyond normal vision
  • Narrative, emotive or political content - a departure from photorealism's cool detachment
  • Deliberate use of photographic effects: depth of field, perspective, range of focus, digital artifacts
  • Large scale - images often 10 to 20 times the size of the reference photograph
  • Sculpture cast in polyester resin with hyper-detailed finish, often at disturbing scale shifts

Key figures

  • Duane Hanson (1925-1996) — Forerunner whose polychromed life-size figure sculptures defined the sculptural strand (Woman Eating, 1971)
  • Chuck Close (1942-2021) — Portraitist whose gridded, digitally inflected surfaces bridge photorealism and hyperrealism
  • Gottfried Helnwein (b. 1948) — Austrian painter of psychologically charged photorealist imagery confronting history and violence
  • Ron Mueck (b. 1958) — Sculptor of lifelike human figures cast at dramatically shifted scale

Example works

  • Woman Eating — Duane Hanson (1971)
  • Circus Act — Charles Bell (1995)

Sources

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