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Lot Essay
Undisputed Photo-Realist master Richard Estes records the visual experience of everyday life in New York City with his signature firm, deliberate brushstrokes and clear, immediate detail. Painting directly from his own photographs, his cool, objective scenes of storefronts, subways, sidewalks, and escalators evince his expert draftsmanship and belie a striking sense of urban calm.
Hot Foods employs a crystal-clear window's reflective surface as a visual vehicle, splicing the humming fluorescent lights, tabletop condiments, and slick red chairs of a diner's interior with the clean, geometric New York City skyline. This fluent, dizzying reconciliation of simultaneous perspectives-in which a pair of crisp white curtains frame both an interior and exterior scene--is a hallmark of Estes' working style. In the words of gallerist Louis Meisel, who is credited with coining the term Photo-Realism: "Estes invented a way to paint what appears to be two entirely different points of focus-the close-up and the distant panorama-as part of one canvas. Neither the eye nor the camera can capture images in this way, but Estes convinces us that it can be done" (L. Meisel, Photorealism Since 1980, New York, 1993, p. 179). With his striking yet straightforward juxtaposition of the monumental and the intimate, Estes coaxes optical wonder from the everyday.
Hot Foods employs a crystal-clear window's reflective surface as a visual vehicle, splicing the humming fluorescent lights, tabletop condiments, and slick red chairs of a diner's interior with the clean, geometric New York City skyline. This fluent, dizzying reconciliation of simultaneous perspectives-in which a pair of crisp white curtains frame both an interior and exterior scene--is a hallmark of Estes' working style. In the words of gallerist Louis Meisel, who is credited with coining the term Photo-Realism: "Estes invented a way to paint what appears to be two entirely different points of focus-the close-up and the distant panorama-as part of one canvas. Neither the eye nor the camera can capture images in this way, but Estes convinces us that it can be done" (L. Meisel, Photorealism Since 1980, New York, 1993, p. 179). With his striking yet straightforward juxtaposition of the monumental and the intimate, Estes coaxes optical wonder from the everyday.