Hyperrealism

About

Hyperrealist works reproduce the look of the world so precisely that viewers may doubt they were made by hand. In painting the approach crystallised in the United States in the late 1960s as Photorealism, when artists worked directly from photographs, often projected onto canvas. Robert Bechtle painted sunlit Californian cars, Richard Estes shop windows full of layered reflections, and Chuck Close enlarged passport-style heads to vast size in Big Self-Portrait (1967–68). Claudio Bravo made wrapped paper packages look solid enough to lift.

Sculptors pushed further. Duane Hanson cast shoppers, tourists and workers in polyester resin and dressed them in real clothes; they are easily mistaken for fellow viewers. Ron Mueck and Evan Penny later used silicone and real hair, sometimes distorting scale or proportion, while Robert Gober handcrafted replicas of sinks, legs and everyday objects. Look for photographic depth of field, mirror-like reflections and no visible brushstrokes.