Posted on 06/09/2012 3:46:55 PM PDT by Doogle
With their spectacular use of focus and reflected light, these incredible artworks look like carefully composed still-life photographs.
But in fact they are all painstakingly rendered on canvas with acrylic paints by Canadian artist Jason de Graaf.
The hyperrealistic paintings, which almost appear as if they are computer generated, are like freeze frames of a world more magical than our own - inspiring the term Magic Realism as a description.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I think the term "illustrator" could be usefully used to refer to those people who produce artistic works for the purpose of having those works reproduced. Paintings which look good in person do not always reproduce well, and vice versa. That is not to suggest that people who produce paintings for reproduction should not be regarded as artists, but rather to recognize that illustration is a slightly different discipline from painting for "direct display". An analogous contrast would exists between a sculptors who produces a wax figure which is meant to be preserved and viewed, versus one which is meant to be used to make a mold for purposes of metal-casting. The final casting of a metal statue may be more of a craft than an art, but that doesn't mean the person producing the wax template wasn't an artist.
I think this particular “illustrator” was really admitting that he was a hack for hire, and not a producer of art for art’s sake. His work had practical uses. A wine bottle label is just that, a wine bottle label. You’ll recall that surrealist art has been co-opted by advertising, both in photography and painting. Is it art when the painting’s sole purpose is to sell cognac or whatever product?
Thanks, I enjoyed looking at them and they’re great. Some better than others. I’ve always liked realism and have painted wine glasses in some of mine.
What makes Mr. Hockney's claims absurd is that many classical realist paintings are, in many ways, superior to photographs. A photograph depicts a scene as one would see it if one looked through a peephole. By contrast, a painting can represent a scene more as one would actually look at it, moving one's head around and shifting one's focus from one part to another.
While it's possible that some artists might have benefited from being able to experiment with a camera obscura, to get a feel for how certain three-dimensional shapes might translate to a two-dimensional painting, they would not have used a camera obscura directly to produce their works. Bouguereau occasionally painted people from photographs when a live subject was unavailable (e.g. if he was hired by a decedent's next of kin), but he much preferred live models. The fact that Hockney could use a camera obscura to produce some bad paintings in no way implies that good painters used such devices.
LOL
***There are artists who print out digital copies of their work on canvas and then brush clear acrylic medium onto those prints to give the effect of brush stokes.****
I saw some of these several years ago. They looked so real they almost fooled me till I got up real close and began to see the dot matrix used in printing the colors.
That was exactly his evidence: a lens sees things differently from the human eye. The paintings in question have the effects and perspective of a lens.
Impressionist painters are the opposite of the type painting that is ultra realistic, like photography. Impressionistic style is just that, an interpretation of reality. These types of paintings have no focal point and little depth. You are supposed to “take it in all at once”.
Same as Norman Rockwell.
***I think the term “illustrator” could be usefully used to refer to those people who produce artistic works for the purpose of having those works reproduced.****
Many thousands of paintings were used for magazine covers from the 1930s through the 1950s. They were considered worthless and could not even be sold at auction so they were thrown away and many were burned. Again, THEY WERE WORTHLESS!
Now if you find one it will be worth $40,000.
Another interesting thing, back in the depression (1929-1940) many artists had jobs painting these magazine covers.
The Government got into the act and decided that any “real” artist would get government backing to do paintings in post offices and gov’t buildings.
The rule was the artist MUST NOT do paintings for hire such as magazine covers.
Another interesting thing, many NY artists worked as illustrators for magazine covers. When the magazines decided to go to photography around 1970, the artists were then out of business, so they put on the big hat, went west and became Cowboy artists.
***A photograph depicts a scene as one would see it if one looked through a peephole.***
The cameras also distort the scene if you don’t use enough distance to photograph them.
Often people who paint from photos will use a distorted photo in which a telephoto lens has been used bringing the back mountains way too close to the front.
Back in elementary school we had a large painting hanging in the main hallway. It was, as I later found, a reproduction of a much larger well-known painting; namely, Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. A few years later, in college, I visited the gallery where hangs the original.
I did so again (after many years) last summer. But I missed the Caillebotte.
How I wish I had kept my drawings of Mary with breasts and Jesus with a penis that got me ejected from the second grade religion class.
*** Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.***
I saw that at the Met Museum of Art in NYC a few weeks ago!
Then I realized the original was much bigger, so I must have seen one of the many studies Seurat did before he did the main painting.
BFL
It's called a giclee and is an affordable way to own a piece of art that would be above your pay grade. If it is added to in the way you explained, by the artist brushing clear medium onto the print, it's called an enhanced giclee and costs more than a regular giclee.
Until you told me, I didn't realize that all the artist did was brush clear medium on the painting to enhance it. I thought they put on some brush strokes here and there with paint. Your description makes perfect sense and would keep the painting from being changed from the original. Thanks for the information!
Back in my Hollywood guitar slinger days, I was working a construction job at the home of a successful concert pianist. She was a nice lady, and very communicative.
We got to talking music, and I remarked to her how much I admired her ability to render the works of the classic masters at such a level of skill (you should have seen her studio....wow). In passing, I'd mentioned to her that I played guitar and wrote songs.
She thanked me for the compliment, then said to me that she admired what I did. I was puzzled, and asked her, "why?" She then told me that she didn't have the first idea of how to string chords together to create a song. I was actually dumbfounded, and insisted to her that it wasn't hard to do, and that with her education, surely she could write well, if she simply tried it.
She shook her head, and sort of laughed at that, then said, "No, that's all been trained out of me. I really couldn't write a song if I tried."
Talk about gaining a very interesting perspective.
Before checking it out here, I didn’t realize how many preliminary studies he had done.
I was referring to the final one, hanging at the Art Institute of Chicago.
You go to any of these museums to see some of their most famous pieces, and you find tons of other interesting stuff too!
Would love to see the Louvre, the Prado, and the Hermitage. That last one is featured in an unusual recent movie by Aleksandr Sokurov, called “Russian Ark.”
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