Photorealism

An outgrowth of Pop art, photorealism is most closely associated with the artists of the 1960s and ’70s who replicated the sharply-focused look of well-composed photographs, such as Chuck Close, Richard Estes, and Malcolm Morley. In Europe, artists like Gerhard Richter and Franz Gertsch have likewise been referred to as photorealists, but for a different reason: The hazy quality and unexpected angles in their portrait paintings often resemble casual, blurred snapshots. “Perhaps because I’m sorry for the photograph, because it has such a miserable existence even though it is such a perfect picture, I would like to make it valid, make it visible,” Richter explains. “That is why I keep painting on and on from photographs, because I can’t make …