Still Life: 1970s Photorealism

August 30, 2013–March 9, 2014

John Baeder, Stardust Motel, 1977. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 1935, Collection

Still Life displays works from the Gallery associated with Photorealism—a movement comprising painters who took photography as their subject and sculptors who recreated the human body with surprising accuracy. A significant trend in 1970s art, Photorealism has sometimes been described since then as a more mechanical offshoot of 1960s Pop art. However, the works in Still Life make a compelling argument that Photorealists captured life in the 1970s with a grittier honesty than has previously been acknowledged.

Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Website

Battcock, Gregory, ed.  Super Realism: A Critical Anthology.  New York: Dutton, 1975.

Hillings, Valerie L.  Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s.  New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2009.

Lindey, Christine.  Superrealist Painting and Sculpture.  New York: Morrow, 1980.

Meisel, Louis K.  Photo-Realism.  New York: H. N. Abrams, 1980.

• John Baeder (b. 1938)
• Robert Bechtle (b. 1932)
• Tom Blackwell (b. 1938)
• John Clem Clarke (b. 1937)
• Chuck Close (b. 1940)
• Davis Cone (b. 1950)
• Robert Cottingham (b. 1935)
• John De Andrea (b. 1941)
• Don Eddy (b. 1944)
• Bruce Everett (b. 1942)
• Audrey Flack (b. 1931)
• Fanz Gertsch (b. 1930)
• Ralph Goings (b. 1928)
• Duane Hanson (1925-1996)
• Martin Hoffman (1935-2013)
• Stephen Lorber (b. 1943)
• Noel Mahaffey (b. 1944)
• Richard McLean (b. 1934)
• Malcolm Morley (b. 1931)
• Stephen Posen (b. 1939) MFA Yale '64
• Gerhard Richter (b. 1932)
• John Salt (b. 1937)
• Paul Sarkisian (b. 1928)
• Ben Schonzeit (b. 1942)
• Paul Staiger (b. 1941)
• Idelle Weber (b. 1932)