Spy Art Review: Photorealism at the Academy by Steve Parks

Estes, now 92, studied art at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, starting in 1952 when his family moved to Illinois. By the early 1960s, the art-world cognoscenti grew weary of Abstract Expressionism, though not so much with appreciative public consumers. Expressionists were then thought to be self-indulgent libertarians. What came into focus was the verisimilitude, the opposite of free-flowing abstract art. Not that there’s anything wrong with realism, but I never quite got it. So maybe you, dear reader, should take that into account regarding this review. I was a lifelong news-print journalist. And an arts critic. I regarded news photography as the recording of history in pictures. Photorealists’ work – besides Richard Estes, considered a leader in this movement – Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, and many others – copied images captured on photos. The skill involved is undeniable. Better than any number of art students I’ve witnessed copying masterpieces in major museums, many of them from Abstract Expressionist paintings. But to what end? Improving on a photograph from which it is taken? At least the students are copying from the real thing to learn how to do it, better or as well if possible.

The urban landscapes Estes interprets in this show of two dozen or so paintings are captured in reflective mirror imagery – Manhattan skyscrapers casting their architectural edifice on the windshield of a parked car. Several others are more directly transparent except for the backward-reading billboards in mirrored opposition. Most impressive to me is the large city-scape 1988 “D-Train” painting encompassing much of the Manhattan skyline from across the East River with the D-train commuter tracks in the anchoring foreground to the right. Yes, you’d recognize the scene if you had stood there in person. The technique and meticulously detailed artistry of what it took to produce is almost overwhelming. But to me, it’s a painterly likeness of a photograph. Which says nothing about the integrity either of photography or painting. I guess I just know what I like in terms of art. All of that makes me an Abstract Expressionist retrograde. I make no apologies except, perhaps, for artistic prejudice.

If photorealism – also known as hyper-realism – is your thing. Richard Estes in this show organized through the highly reputable Portland (Maine) Museum of Art, is not one you’ll want to miss.

***
Quite apart from photorealism is the reality of a very different sort in the archival collection of pieces, including Faith Ringgold’s stunningly joyful quilt panorama she calls “Dancing on the George  Washington Bridge II,” evidently her second take on the subject – brightly dressed African-American women in dance still-life posed against the GW bridgescape separating New Jersey from the Bronx. More fabric art follows with Darlene Taylor’s “Mother: Archive Files” Numbers 1-8 –  silhouette facial profiles of women sewn onto lacy “canvases.” But before you leave the cozy Spiralis Gallery just down the hall from the museum’s main entrance, pause long enough and step back a bit to take in the implied forward motion of what celebrated African-American painter Jacob Lawrence self-referenced as “dynamic cubism.” The stark angular imagery of his 1997 “Forward Together” screenprint more than suggests liberation under the fearless leadership of Harriet Tubman, her hands splayed as paired deliverance flags to her fugitive refugees.

Elizabeth Catlett’s “Young Douglass” 2004 linocut portrait of the former Talbot County slave known then as Freddie, directs us into the adjoining gallery of text and images from “Kin: Rooted in Hope,” a young adult book by Carole and Jeffery Weatherford further embracing the liberation-from-slavery theme.

Speaking of Frederick Douglass, who I once said “was my neighbor” because he was held a slave on a several thousand-acre plantation, portions of which were less than a mile from where I grew up on a Dutchman’s Lane farm: Then and again President Trump, one month into his first term, clearly had no clue of who Frederick Douglass was or when he lived and died. “I hear he’s done some good things,” Trump said of the self-taught, self-liberated onetime slave. In the gallery replete with black-and-white images of Douglass and contemporaries, including Daniel Lloyd, 1812-1875, son of the slave-holding governor of Maryland and an Eastern Shore aristocrat, Edward Lloyd V, who writes in Douglass’ voice: “Before Paul Revere warned of the British invasion and Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, my freedom was already hostage.” Among the slaves who were once Edward Lloyd’s property was “Freddie,” soon to become Frederick, the spokesman and champion for the oppressed and the enslaved.

***

To round out your visit to the museum, take a few minutes and one flight upstairs to the hallway gallery for the 10 colorfully beaded fabric scenes of “Haitian Drapo: The Art of Mireille Delice.”  Be sure to check out the twin mermaids and the ceremonial leaf-gathering known as “pile fey.” And then just imagine the skill and patience it takes to create such detailed fantasies sewing beads as opposed to applying paint strokes. I have zero talent in either discipline, but I appreciate both as fine art.

***

Getting back to photorealism, after you’ve taken in the Richard Estes exhibit, consider the guided tours of Easton’s “urban” landmarks scheduled for May 25, June 29 and July 27. Rediscover the town many of us call home. In retirement, my wife Liz and I looked all over the New York to Mid-Atlantic region, and aside from urban explorations that involved high parking fees for two cars, we found lots of attractive “developments” with a strip mall around the corner – even some with a supermarket. But we longed for an authentic town to call home. Well, there’s not much inauthentic about Easton. Take a walk to appreciate what we have here, not to mention lovely neighboring burgs such as St. Michaels and Oxford. Welcome to what my mother once called “God’s country.” I don’t know about God, but this place is – as my favorite sports announcer from the past, Chuck Thompson, once or a thousand times called it – “The land of pleasant living.” May it be so – summer beach traffic notwithstanding.

‘RICHARD ESTES: URBAN LANDSCAPES’