Andy Warhol self-portraits

We all know that Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was a bit, no a lot, of an enigma, even to people close to him and those of us who knew him even a little. I spent some time working with him, and if a man could get through a day without saying much at all, that was Andy. Luckily he had front men - the late and charming Fred Hughes oversaw things at the Factory and made things work. It was a fascinating time in New York looking back - Gerard Malanga was making the silkscreen prints, Paul Morrisey was making  films, featuring people like Joe Delassandro (who would sometimes man the front desk) and the lovely Viva Superstar who on meeting me for the first time said "Well, you never WHO you're going to meet on the third floor". I've still no idea what she meant.
Andy Warhol's self-portraits occupy a central position in the artist's body of work. He’s best known for his iconic portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Jackie Kennedy. In his self-portraits however we see him as he saw himself, or as he wanted to be seen. The works are portraits of the artist's masks and their ambiguity lies in whether they are, in fact, accurate representations of the real Warhol or simply a means of deception - an act in pursuit of privacy.
Every portrait projects both a vacancy and an allure, but essentially a superficiality that appears to betray no clear feeling. The artist's face drifts or stares blankly as if bored by the attention. In averting the gaze of the viewer, Warhol seems to deflect analysis and confrontation, both craving and scared of the attention at the same time. When he cast himself next to Hollywood's most famous, his own worth of celebrity was questioned - he had become well known by association with other famous people and by depending on the kindness of photogenic strangers.

Richard Estes - photorealist

Following on from my post on Chuck Close I thought I'd take a look at some of the other artists associated with photorealism. Richard Estes (born1932, Kewanee, Illinois) is another famous photorealist artist. His paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate cityscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photorealist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close and Duane Hanson.
At an early age, the Estes family moved to Chicago where he studied fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago between 1952 - 56. He frequently studied the works of realist painters such as Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper, and Thomas Eakins, who are strongly represented in the Art Institute's collection. After he completed his course of studies, Estes moved to New York where for the next ten years he worked as a graphic artist for various magazine publishers and advertising agencies in New York and Spain. During this period, he painted in his spare time. He had lived in Spain since 1962 and by 1966 was financially able to give up the day job. 
Beginning around 1967, he began to paint shopfronts and buildings with glass windows and more importantly, the reflected images shown on these windows. The paintings were based on colour photographs he would take, which trapped the evanescent nature of the reflections, which would change in part with the lighting and the time of day. Estes' paintings were based on several photographs of the subject. He avoided using famous New York landmarks. Though called a photorealist I personally think that his paintings have an edgy feel. He uses the language of Edward Hopper - often a deserted urban environment, free of litter, but stuck in another time dimension – I think of them more as photosurrealist.

Christmas Eve paintings

'Christmas Eve' Sir John Everett Millais 1887

'Christmas Eve' George Henry Yewell 1863

'Julaftonen' (Christmas Eve) Carl Larsson

'Christmas Eve' William Hippon Gadsby

'A Dream of Christmas Eve' George Hitchcock

Ralph Goings - photorealist

Ralph Goings (born 1928 Corning, California) is another American painter loosely associated with the Photorealism movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California.
He’s best known for his highly detailed paintings of diners, pick-up trucks, and California banks, portrayed in a deliberately objective manner and bathed in SoCal sunshine. I rather like his still-lifes best – he seems to have made the humble ketchup bottle an iconic image and so I’m featuring quite a few of those here. 
He’s been painting them for four decades now, though his more recent works are less photorealist, looser and more textural – the last painting shown here (below) of a cake, is more reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud’s work (see earlier post) than Goings’ own oeuvre. 
Ralph Goings: "In 1963 I wanted to start painting again but I decided I wasn't going to do abstract pictures. It occurred to me that I should go as far to the opposite as I could. ... It occurred to me that projecting and tracing the photograph instead of copying it freehand would be even more shocking. To copy a photograph literally was considered a bad thing to do. It went against all of my art school training... some people were upset by what I was doing and said 'it's not art it can't possibly be art'. That gave me encouragement in a perverse way, because I was delighted to be doing something that was really upsetting people... I was having a hell of a lot of fun..."
"My paintings are about light, about the way things look in their environment and especially about how things look painted. 
Form, colour and space are at the whim of reality, their discovery and organization is the assignment of the realist painter."