Exhibition -

My work is not Photorealist. The term, 'Photorealism', was coined by the New York art dealer Louis K. Meisel in the late nineteen sixties, early seventies and refers to a group of American painters whose work, to varying degrees, closely resembles photographs (Meisel has published several books on the genre). The artists include Richard Estes, Robert Bechtle and, the most well known though most reluctant member, Chuck Close. I have no objection to the term itself or the work of this movement but bristle at the idea that all realist painting based on photography derives from this one school. The photo based painting that inspired this exhibition includes the Photorealist painters but also both historical and twentieth century European photo derived painting, as well as several artists whose work, while not based on photography, owes an obvious debt to it.

Historical camera based painting has a lengthy tradition dating back at least to the fifteenth century and artists like the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer and the Italian Giovanni Canaletto. While these artists pre date the invention of chemically developed paper photographs, they used the optical devices or cameras popular during the periods in which they worked and actually traced the projected images directly onto canvas. Although heir work may not appear particularly photographic today, it stands out noticeably from that of their contemporaries (compare a de Hooch interior with a Vermeer). David Hockney, moreover, argues in his book 'Secret Knowledge', that the scope of historical artists who worked with optical devices or cameras is even more broad and includes artists like Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memlin. While appearing at first glance to have little in common with nineteen seventies Photorealism, historical camera based painters were the first to come up with the idea of using the images produced by cameras to create paintings.

As with historical camera based painters, the work of several artists from the twentieth century, while not associated with seventies Photorealism and not even based directly on photographs, wouldn't be possible without photography. I'm thinking here of Antonio Lopez Garcia and Andrew Wyeth. Neither uses photography directly, that is to say in the process of creating their paintings they are not referencing a photographic source, but the finished products evoke the qualities of photography (for months I thought the reproduced drawings in Garcia's book were black and white photos – the book was in Spanish!). Regardless of photography's role in the production of their work, the care, precision, attention to detail, and subtly of the works these artists created is what any artist, including myself, working to create a photo like image, strives for. The minute detail, more commonly associated with photography, the perspective and the compositions of their works while maybe not drawn directly from any specific photograph, moreover, can't help but be informed by the image saturated cultures of their creators.

Similarly, several painters working from photographs in the twentieth century who have not been associated with the American Photorealism of the 1970's, like Gerhard Richter and Franz Gertsch, or who have been initially linked only to be dropped for unknown reasons, like Chuck Close, also make the term problematic. In Richter and Gertsch's case there exclusion seems to be based, bewilderingly, on geography. The fact that they are European's seems to signify that they aren't photorealists. In Close's case, he departed from his early airbrush realism for something more painterly, so it isn't as confusing why, it is argued by some, that he does not adhere to the minute detail of true Photorealism. Although, I suspect that all three would rather not be associated with the term in any event, as if it brings down there work to a pedestrian kitschy level from that of 'high art'. I don't think this point can be overestimated. 'Photorealism' for so many conjures associations with something gimmicky, campy or corny, something that flies in the face of twentieth century attempts to 'conceptualize' art. It's as if 'photorealism' is perceived as representing a threat, or at least a benign attempt to reduce painting to the purely mechanical.

It would be easier if there was another term, with less baggage and fewer associations that could refer to what I do, and to all the varieties of painting based on photography, without endlessly referring to only one branch of this genre. Certainly, the term 'realism' would have to be in there somewhere though this, of course, has it's own controversial history and myriads of branches and subgroups – what do Courbet's realism, Russian Social realism and photorealism really have in common anyway? Until there is a term that refers to historical photo based painting, contemporary realists and to the US seventies movement, and is still relevant to art today, I suppose we will continue to use photorealism in a broad, generalist kind of way. This doesn't, of course, make synthesizing all these ideas visually, in light our linguistic lack of creativity, any easier.

*Mike Bayne wishes to acknowlege the support of the Toronto Arts Council for this exhibition.