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LEFT Alice Tully Hall, 2015, oil on panel, 30x22cm
© RICHARD ESTES PROFILE
Richard Estes
At the age of 89, photorealist master Richard Estes is finally having his first major UK exhibition. STEVE PILL explores his detailed approach and learns why he found an unlikely ally in Damien Hirst
The American state of Illinois managed to delay the impact of the Great Depression in 1929, as a diverse economic output and a wide-ranging agricultural base helped it to weather the initial downturn. They could only hold out for so long. In the state’s largest city, Chicago, the unemployment rate would hit 40 percent, homelessness and crime was rife, and freak weather only exacerbated unrest. The city’s emergency relief funds were totally depleted by February 1932.
A little over three months later, Richard Estes was born on 14 May in Kewanee, Illinois, a small town just off the I-80 between Chicago and Des Moines. Like many of his generation raised during the country’s lowest ebb, he would embrace postwar optimism and craft a clear-eyed vision of modern America, rather than wallowing in the funk of the Great Depression. He did so as the leading light of the photorealist movement, a style of painting that emerged in the late 1960s and was simultaneously conservative and cutting edge, traditional and modern.
New York gallery owner Louis K Meisel first coined the term “photorealism” in 1969 and several years later set out a five-point definition of the genre which specified that a true photorealist should use “the camera and photograph to gather information” and “have the technical ability to make the finished work appear photographic”. Alongside Richard Estes, artists such as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close and Audrey Flack created meticulous depictions of real life that provided a contrast to the prevalent Abstract Expressionist style popular in galleries of that era.
While Richard is now rightly regarded as one of the pioneers of photorealism, he nearly didn’t become an artist at all. In a true Sliding Doors moment, he was all set to study architecture under the great Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology until a trip to Europe prevented him from submitting his application in time. As a keen painter in high school, he opted instead for a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The gallery’s collection proved a regular and inspiring place of study with widescreen 19th-century European
landscapes such as Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day a particular favourite.
By 1959, he had moved to New York and found work as a graphic artist for the advertising agencies of Madison Avenue. This was the era of Mad Men when the suits were as sharp as the taglines and adverts were designed on paper, not screens. Largely working freelance, Richard honed his ability to quickly conjure up multiple variations of a subject on demand for big-budget clients. The experience got him over the stigma of using photographic reference, as time was of the essence.
In his spare time, Richard continued to paint and took to padding the streets of New York with his camera in search of potential subjects. His interest in architecture remained a key factor, but paintings of Manhattan landmarks such as his takes on the Guggenheim Museum or the Flatiron Building were rare. Estes instead focused on the more mundane aspects of the built environment, filling his canvases with diners and drug stores, phone booths and billboards. Asked recently if he had an artist’s statement, Richard answered succinctly: “If it is really ugly, paint it.” While many would argue that there is much beauty to be found in Richard’s scenes of urban life, it is true that his work lacks the romantic sweep of his painterly heroes like Edward Hopper and Thomas Eakins. The artist was equally unsentimental when asked by an interviewer from NPR radio why he didn’t just exhibit his original reference photo. “I get more money for the painting, I guess,” was his flippant response.
In truth, Richard’s paintings are far more than mere photo facsimiles and the level of artistry, of decision making throughout the process, is often underestimated. “The apparently straightforward documentary simplicity of his depictions is deceptive,” agrees Linda Chase in the Phaidon Focus monograph Richard Estes. “He paints his subjects from odd and unexpected angles, employing an array of photographic techniques including wide-angle lenses, extreme and unusual cropping, and multiple images. At times he alters the photographic information and deliberately flouts traditional precepts of good composition in the service of an apparent verisimilitude that confounds our expectations.”
The latter is particularly true, his awkward, asymmetric viewpoints reminding us of photographic snapshots when in fact he was often working from incredibly deliberate, composed source material and photo collages. Another of Meisel’s definitions for photorealism was the use of “a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas”, which for many artists at the time meant using slide projectors to aid the tracing of a photo. Richard instead favoured a much looser beginning, sketching out a composition directly onto the canvas in an acrylic underpainting as he shifted elements around to suit his needs. It is the irony of the work of this photorealist master that if one held up his canvases to reality, one would find certain features out of place – a bus stop moved, a wall lowered, a colour shifted.
Richard was able to turn to painting full-time in 1966 and many of the trademark features of his work were established early on. The following year the painter was exposed to the work of photographer Lee Friedlander, showing in the New Documents exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and soon embraced reflective surfaces such as car bonnets and storefront windows in his own work. Other features were a natural result of the way he collected source material. Many viewers
LEFT Serengeti, 2015, oil on panel, 35x57cm
ABOVE Brooklyn Diner, 2021, oil on canvas, 94x140cm comment on the lack of people in his early paintings, although that was as much to do with his preference for strolling around SoHo with his camera on quiet Sunday mornings as it was a conscious creative decision.
Likewise, it was common to find a foreground in shadow, drawing the eye to brighter light in the distance, yet again this was a common occurrence amid the high-rise buildings of Lower Manhattan when the low morning sun had yet to fully rise overhead.
Much like the sharp all-over focus of his paintings, Richard’s debut solo exhibition at New York’s Allan Stone Gallery announced his vision to the world fully formed.
More than half a century after that American debut, Richard’s first major exhibition has finally opened in the UK. It is all the more remarkable for having happened at the Newport Street Gallery, the south London venue built for Damien Hirst to exhibit his extensive art collection. “Richard is a living icon of American painting and this will be a rare opportunity to see his mesmerising works in person,” said a clearly excitable Hirst. “I’ve loved his work since I was shown it when I was 13 by my art teacher in high school, Mr Wood. While trends and movements come and go, Richard has stayed true to his vision and singular approach to painting for more than 50 years and I find this
Richard Estes’s paintings are far more than mere photo facsimiles and the level of artistry is often underestimated
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT Beech Hill I, 2010, oil on panel, 58x40cm; Rihanna, 2012, oil on panel, 31x61cm; Madrid, 2018, oil on panel, 41x51cm unwavering commitment to be a true inspiration.”
Since that initial breakthrough, Richard has indeed ploughed his own furrow, largely sticking to the style while occasionally expanding his field of vision beyond his beloved New York. In 1975, he bought a home on Maine’s Mount Desert Island and divides his time between studios there and back in Manhattan. Travel broadened his horizons, with the success of major 1970s shows (at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston among others) funding regular trips to Europe and beyond.
Richard turned 89 this year and his most recent paintings in the new exhibition reveal his continued wanderlust, with Brooklyn diners and boat trips in Maine jostling for attention alongside far-flung destinations such as Venice, Tanzania and Nepal. Even his most recent paintings of New York – filled with contemporary signifiers like Rihanna adverts and Whole Foods stores, alongside enough reflections to prove his magpie-like eye for a shiny surface is still in tact – present a simple and pristine vision of city life, in keeping with a man who is always humble to the point of being dismissive of his own achievements in interviews.
“While Richard’s much-loved paintings of New York will be central to the show, the lesser-known works made from his travels around the world are a revelation and I’m super excited to include them in his show and to be helping to give a broader understanding of Richard’s work to a British audience,” adds Hirst.
While it may be surprising to learn that the man famed for pickling sharks has a fondness for quiet 1970s photorealist cityscapes, there is no doubting Hirst’s commitment to this first retrospective. The 45 paintings will be collected in a dedicated hardback catalogue with text written by Patterson Sims, the co-curator of Richard’s 2014 US retrospective at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
And much like Richard alighting on the perfect subject during one of his genteel Sunday walks around the city, it doesn’t matter so much how this exhibition got here, we should just be glad that it has. Richard Estes: Voyages runs until 12 December at Newport Street Gallery, London. www.newportstreetgallery.com
