Richard Estes | |
|---|---|
 Richard Estes at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2014 | |
| Born | (1932-05-14)May 14, 1932 (age 92) |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Art Institute of Chicago |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work | Telephone Booths |
| Movement | Photorealism |
Richard Estes (born May 14, 1932, inKewanee, Illinois) is an American artist, best known for hisphotorealistpaintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimatecity andgeometriclandscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with such painters asJohn Baeder,Chuck Close,Robert Cottingham,Audrey Flack,Ralph Goings, andDuane Hanson. Author Graham Thompson writes "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism orhyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes,Denis Peterson,Audrey Flack, andChuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."[1]
At an early age, Estes moved toChicago with his family, where he studiedfine arts atThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1952–56). He frequently studied the works ofrealist painters such asEdgar Degas,Edward Hopper, andThomas Eakins, who are strongly represented in the Art Institute's collection. After he completed his course of studies, Estes moved toNew York City and, for the next ten years, worked as agraphic artist for variousmagazine publishers andadvertising agencies in New York andSpain. During this period, he painted in his spare time. He had lived in Spain since 1962 and, by 1966, was financially able to paint full-time. He is openly gay. TheToledo Museum of Art website states about when he moved to New York: "Part of the city’s appeal to Estes as a young gay man was the relative freedom it offered, allowing him to visit gay bars and afford his own apartment."[2]
Estes stayed true to the photographs he used: when his paintings include stickers, signs, and window displays, they are always depicted backwards because of the reflection. His work rarely included litter or snow around the buildings because he believed these details detract from the buildings themselves. The paintings are always in daylight, suggesting "vacant and quiet Sunday mornings." Estes' works strive to create convincing three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional canvas. His work has been described in terms ranging from super-realism, sharp-focus realism, neo-realism, photo-realism, to radical realism. The most common one is super-realism.[3] Estes' paintings from the early 1960s are typically of city dwellers engaged in everyday activities. Around 1967, he began to paint storefronts andbuildings withglasswindows and their reflectedimages. The paintings were based on Estes'color photographs, which captured the evanescence of the reflections, changing with the lighting and the time of day.
Estes paintings were based on multiple photographs of the subject. He avoided famous New York landmarks. His paintings provided fine details that were invisible to the naked eye, and gave "depth and intensity of vision that only artistic transformation can achieve."[4]While some alteration was done for the sake ofaestheticcomposition, it was important to Estes that the central and the main reflected objects be recognizable, and that the evanescent quality of the reflections be preserved.He had a one-man show in 1968 at theAllan Stone Gallery. His works have been exhibited at theMetropolitan Museum of Art, theWhitney Museum, theThyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 1971, Estes was granted a National Council for the Arts fellowship. The same year, he was elected into theNational Academy of Design as an Associate member, and he became a full Academician in 1984.
He was the subject of the documentaryActually Iconic: Richard Estes (2019), directed by Olympia Stone.[5]
The highest price reached by one of his paintings in the art market was whenGifts of Nature (1978) sold by $1,284,000 atChristie's, on 10 March 2023.[6][7]
Estes is represented in several leading public collections, including theMetropolitan Museum of Art, inNew York, theMuseum of Modern Art, inNew York, theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum, inNew York, theWhitney Museum of American Art, inNew York, theNational Gallery of Art, inWashington, D.C., theSmithsonian American Art Museum, inWashington, D.C.,The Art Institute of Chicago, theCleveland Museum of Art, theDetroit Institute of Arts, theHigh Museum of Art, inAtlanta, the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, inBudapest, theCentre national des arts plastiques, inParis, theMuseo Botero, inBogota, theTate collections, inEngland, and theThyssen-Bornemisza Museum, inMadrid.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]
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