Fruit floating above a tabletop in delicious suspension. A person’s face looming from the background of a dark room. These are scenes from the 65 paintings in the Realism exhibit at Norton Art Foundation. The show is stunning. These are paintings that offer a highly detailed, accurately-colored photographic impact.
Slap-your-face realism in oils, tempera, acrylics and pencil have been collected from a global list of highly competent painters for this show. The artists all belong to the International Guild of Realism and were chosen by jury.
Among them: Alberto Hinojosa, a painter who has been head of the Louisiana Tech art department.
The realism provokes philosophical questions: how does one appreciate a super-realistic piece? Why not substitute a photo? It is a joy to see how highly developed the human eye and hand can become. It is like watching a world-class athlete. Millions tune in on TV to watch their feats. These are athletes of the micro-movement, of the tiny brush and steady eye.
Imagine a box wrapped in brown paper, ready to be shipped. Imagine the string around it. A label. Oops; there’s a tear in the paper. I can see the box underneath the paper. It fools the eye: it’s a trompe l’oeil painting. The image of box, paper and string is a marvelous trick, an elaborate gambit. And it represents one of mankind’s most ancient and artful games.
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