Richard Estes was born on May 14, 1932, in Kewanee, Ill., and received art training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago between 1952 and 1956. Much of his training was in figural and traditional subjects. Following his graduation he worked as a graphic designer in Chicago, and also in New York City from when he moved there in 1959 until 1966 when he became a full-time painter. In 1962, on his own savings, he painted in Spain for a year. His first one-man show took place in New York in 1968.
Estes' work has been labeled variously as super-realism, neo-realism, photo-realism, or radical realism. All these terms are useful in understanding Estes' style, but super-realism is the one used more frequently. Another term, one used as the title of an important group show in 1972, was "sharp-focus realism." This exhibition included traditional, non-abstract, illusionistic work. Most works looked like large photographs.
Estes' use of photography made the sharp-focus realism show controversial because critics were not comfortable using the term "realism." Realism is the 19th-century artistic style associated with subjects of modern, everyday life, especially in the work of artists such as Courbet and Eakins. For the 20th-century artists, the use of the photograph was essential, since it was the common denominator by which most people developed norms of seeing. Estes normally used several photographs in the preparation of a single composition. The artworks are not reproductions of photographs, but highly organized compositions based on photographs.
Estes' works frequently portray anonymous streets or other urban sights, with reflective glass, metal, cars, store-fronts, and other surfaces. Often scenes include elaborate signage, curved and reflective architectural shapes, and colored neon, reminiscent of Art Deco. But other details make clear that Estes was not recreating a previous era in his artworks, but rather showing structures that had endured the passage of time. The reflective surfaces concentrate attention not only on what is inside the windows but on what is around the viewer, the context of those contents.
Most of the scenes are of Manhattan, but there are also images of Venice, Chicago, and Paris. His scenes show daylight, never night, and suggest vacant and quiet Sunday mornings. He rarely included garbage, people, slush or snow, or other details that would detract from the structures of the city. But there are numerous details in terms of signs, stickers, and window displays, often viewed backwards because reflected. An Estes work presents more visual information than can easily be received. This wealth of familiar detail is essential to the concept of Realism.
Estes admired the early 20th-century photographer Atget and 18th-century Venetian vedute (view) painters such as Canaletto and Bellotto. These artists presented detached views of their surroundings, sensitive to the particularity of places but equally concerned with strong pictorial composition. Estes' artworks are far removed from the powerful Abstract Expressionist tendency in American painting in the post-World War II period. His relationship to Pop Art was more complex. He did not share the light-hearted casual approach of those artists, but certainly relied on aspects of popular culture in his work.
Richard Estes' art emphasizes craftsmanship and traditional conventions of making a two-dimensional work look three-dimensional, allowing the viewer to play the impartial observer, so that the sensation of being in that scene determines a more subtle mood. He was one of the most accomplished artists in defining and presenting the urban landscape in a super-realist style.
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