Seeing is believing with 'Photorealism Revisited'

Despite the near-microscopic attention to detail — the finery of feathers covering a chick, the tiny crosshatching inside a car headlight, the swirling translucent interior of a glass marble — the more than 60 works in “Photorealism Revisited” aren't photographs.

They are paintings based on photographs.

“You have to see it to believe because what you're going to see are images that appear so photographic that it almost seems impossible that the artist would be able to contrive and create such detail through paint. This is detail through paint and through their technique that they can trick the eye,” said Klos, associate curator at the museum, who will speak Wednesday night before the members' preview.

“Even though they look very photographic — they look very realistic — they are certainly images that have been created only by an artist's hand.”

Enduring movement

The term “photorealism” was coined by gallery owner Louis K. Meisel in 1968 to describe artists who began favoring a new type of realism inspired by photography. The aesthetic grew out of the pop art and minimalism movements.

“To be considered a photorealist, you have to have engaged the medium of photography in some way as a source material,” Klos said. “Some artists prefer to work from photographs from magazines, from popular culture, reflecting the pop art movement, and others take very strategic and contrived ... photographs to create their composition. And from there, they can then further manipulate the image, whether it be by hand-drawing it or even putting it into Photoshop and changing the colors, creating what they want their composition to be of their painting.

“But the end result is truly a painting and not a photograph.”

“Photorealism Revisited” features works by two Oklahoma artists: Charles Bell, a Tulsa native and University of Oklahoma graduate who died in 1995 at the age of 60, and Dennis James Martin, an Oklahoma City resident who died in 2001 at the age of 45.