Unreal: Photorealist Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Audrey Flack, Queen, 1976, acrylic on canvas, 80 × 80 in. (203.2 × 203.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Louis K. and Susan P. Meisel, 2022.11.5
From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Photorealist painters helped define the image of postwar America. Artists such as Tom Blackwell, Audrey Flack, and Ralph Goings trained their eyes on the everyday places and things in world around them — diners, parking lots, cars, and blocks of newly built houses — and to the new relationships between nature and the city that had developed. Unreal explores the movement’s artistry and artifices, showing how its practitioners created an image of modern life that made it appear as though it just existed.
Description
Featuring 22 iconic works by 19 artists, Unreal examines the photorealist style through themes of "Postwar Landscape" and "Car Culture" as well as examples of still life and portraiture. These works show how the style was embedded in contemporary ideas about social change, gender, and technology. The exhibition situates the information and detail-driven style of the Photorealists within the larger context of the late 1960s and early 1970s, at a moment when major social and political events of the time, including the Vietnam War, the space race, and the new urbanism were interpreted through the filter of data and statistics. It explores how these artists created an image of a world that privileged information and a particular conception of identity to construct an environment that appeared as if it just existed.
Unreal: Photorealist Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum celebrates a major gift to SAAM by Louis K. and Susan P. Meisel of paintings from their collection. The exhibition is organized by Sarah Newman, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art.