“Richard Estes’ Realism” is the most comprehensive exhibition of Estes’ paintings ever organized. A master of contemporary realism, Estes is primarily known as a painter of the urban landscape. The exhibition features nearly 50 paintings from Estes’ first mature New York City facades from the late 1960s to panoramic views of Manhattan and other cities and natural sites around the world.
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Richard Estes, Double Self-Portrait, 1976, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Stuart M. Speiser Fund, 1976. © Richard Estes, courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
Richard Estes, Double Self-Portrait, 1976, oil on canvas, 24 x 36 inches, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Stuart M. Speiser Fund, 1976. © Richard Estes, courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY
Jointly organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine, the artworks in “Richard Estes’ Realism” are selected by Patterson Sims, an independent curator, and Jessica May, curator of contemporary and modern art at the Portland Museum of Art. Virginia Mecklenburg, chief curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is coordinating the exhibition in Washington, D.C. The exhibition will be on view at the Portland Museum of Art from May 22 through Sept. 7 and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from Oct. 10 through Feb. 8, 2015.
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D Train, by Richard Estes. Photo courtesy of the American Art Museum.
The exhibition explores the full range of Estes’ career as a painter. Widely acknowledged as a pioneering practitioner of photorealism, Estes’ sharply focused technique goes beyond the photographic to create complex constructions of light, reflection and perspective. Paintings in the exhibition balance Estes’ interest in cities with his explorations of the Maine coast and the woods on Mount Desert Island, where he has spent part of each year since the late 1970s. Most recently, Estes turned from luminous sunlit scenes to nocturnal images of New York City. Several of Estes’ rare portraits also are included in the exhibition.
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The exhibition explores the full range of Estes’ career as a painter. Widely acknowledged as a pioneering practitioner of photorealism, Estes’ sharply focused technique goes beyond the photographic to create complex constructions of light, reflection and perspective. Paintings in the exhibition balance Estes’ interest in cities with his explorations of the Maine coast and the woods on Mount Desert Island, where he has spent part of each year since the late 1970s. Most recently, Estes turned from luminous sunlit scenes to nocturnal images of New York City. Several of Estes’ rare portraits also are included in the exhibition.
Ten Doors, 1972 Richard Estes Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC)
Estes’ compositions—amalgamations of the multiple photographs he takes for each composition—are dramatic and complex to the point of ambiguity. He layers and merges multiple viewpoints to create dense and detailed scenes. Though figures are often present in his work, they are—like most passersby in public spaces—anonymous and uncommunicative. His seeminglyeffortless technical finesse captures the intricate geometries of the city, the subtle contours and nuanced tones of natural landscapes and the shimmering fluidity of water. Estes’ realism is a compelling record of the appearance of urban and natural environments in the late 20th and early 21st century.
About the Artist
Born in 1932 and raised in central Illinois, Estes studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1952 to 1956. In 1959, he moved to New York City, where he has lived ever since. For several years, he worked in commercial publishing and advertising as a paste-up, layout and illustration artist. In the mid-1960s, Estes began to paint from his own photographs, developing paintings that are rooted in Dutch, Venetian and American representations of urban architecture. In 1978, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston organized the first major career survey of his work, which was followed by his 1991 retrospective at the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Estes is considered the foremost practitioner of the international group of artists known loosely as photorealists and has been celebrated for more than 45 years as one of the premier painters of American cityscapes.
Publication
“Richard Estes’ Realism” is accompanied by a catalog with essays on Estes’ by Sims and May. The book also includes a detailed chronology by independent art historian Helen Ferrulli. It is published by the Portland Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and distributed by Yale University Press.
Credit
“Richard Estes’ Realism” is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Portland Museum of Art, Maine.