A rich compendium of Estes' virtuosic photorealist paintings, which capture light and reflections in brilliant detail Richard Estes (b. 1932) is one of the most celebrated adopters of Photorealism; his paintings are characterized by painstaking detail that mimics the clarity and accuracy of photographs. Estes' most famous canvases from the 1970s depict New York's urban landscape, and his manner of painting reflections in a multitude of metal and glass surfaces displays astounding technical skill. In his subsequent career, Estes has continued to demonstrate his superlative ability to show complex plays of light and shadow in Maine seascapes, views of Venetian lagoons, and nighttime street scenes. Accompanying Estes' first solo exhibition of paintings in the United States in over two decades, Richard Estes' Realism surveys fifty years of his work and places him within the historical narrative of realist painting. The authors explore the ongoing modernist dialogue between camera and canvas, and discuss the situation of Estes' work at the crossroads of painting and photography. Fifty full-page plates showcase the amazing precision of Estes' paintings, and a thorough chronology and bibliography provide an enlightening account of his life. This handsome book offers a lavish presentation of Estes' spellbinding body of work that attests to his enduring artistic impact. Distributed for the Portland Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Portland Museum of Art (05/22/14-09/07/14) Smithsonian American Art Museum (10/10/14-02/08/15)

This luxurious volume—the fourth in a series by Louis K. Meisel—is a comprehensive documentation of 21st-century Photorealism, one of the most popular art movements since the late 1960s. Photorealists work painstakingly from photographs to create startlingly realistic paintings, and where they once used film for gathering information, they now rely on digital technology, which has vastly expanded the amount of detail that can be captured. In these visual marvels they bring insights to vernacular subjects—cars, cityscapes, portraits—and make the commonplace uncommon. Illustrating the book with more than 850 works created since 2000, Meisel covers every major Photorealist still active (including Ralph Goings, Richard Estes, Tom Blackwell, Richard McLean, and John Salt) as well as remarkable newcomers. For the first time he also includes Verist sculptors such as John De Andrea and Duane Hanson.

Nathanael West has been hailed as “an apocalyptic writer,” “a writer on the left,” and “a precursor to postmodernism.” But until now no critic has succeeded in fully engaging West’s distinctive method of negation. In American Superrealism, Jonathan Veitch examines West’s letters, short stories, screenplays and novels—some of which are discussed here for the first time—as well as West’s collaboration with William Carlos Williams during their tenure as the editors of Contact. Locating West in a lively, American avant-garde tradition that stretches from Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol, Veitch explores the possibilities and limitations of dada and surrealism—the use of readymades, scatalogical humor, human machines, “exquisite corpses”—as modes of social criticism. American Superrealism offers what is surely the definitive study of West, as well as a provocative analysis that reveals the issue of representation as the central concern of Depression-era America.

Reflective shop windows, limousines with shiny chrome, garishly colored plastic kitsch, and urban scenes have been the favorite subjects of the Photorealists for fifty years. This publication presents the impressive works of art by leading figures in this movement, starting with sixties artists (Richard Estes, Chuck Close, and Don Eddy) and moving through three generations of artists to the hyper-realistic visual experiences of contemporary digital artists (Yigal Ozeri, Robert Neffson).

Lawrence Alloway (1926–90) was one of the most influential and widely respected art writers of the postwar years. A key interpreter of pop art, abstraction, and land art, he was also involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art. Art and Pluralism provides close and critical readings of Alloway's writings and sets his work in the context of the London and New York art worlds from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Nigel Whiteley underlines the particular importance of pluralism and its relationship with the artistic value systems that bookended it—formalism and postmodernism—shedding new light on postwar visual culture as a whole.

America today faces a world more complicated than ever before, but our politicians have failed to envision a foreign policy that addresses our greatest threats. Ethical Realism shows how the United States can successfully combine genuine morality with tough and practical common sense. By outlining core principles and a set of concrete proposals for tackling the terrorist threat and contend with Iran, Russia, the Middle East, and China, Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman show us how to strengthen our security, pursue our national interests, and restore American leadership in the world.

Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary art in the twenty-first century. Realism has played an important role in art history ever since the discovery of perspective. Here, John Russell Taylor delineates the artist’s endeavor to re-create the smallest detail, from centuries before the invention of photography to the present day. This book has been published to complement a series of shows called “Exactitude” at London’s Plus One Gallery of contemporary artists working in a figurative, hyperrealist style. The diversity of such works, whether still lifes, extreme close-ups, large-scale cityscapes, landscapes, or commercial packaging, is revealed. The artists, including Pedro Campos, Clive Head, Ben Johnson, David Ligare, Cynthia Poole, John Salt, Cesar Santander, Ben Schonzeit, and Tjalf Sparnaay, come from all over the world but are united here by their meticulous approach to their work whether they are depicting people, American diners, book spines, or car engines.

The Davidsons assembled an extraordinary collection of American drawings dating from 1960 to the present, showcasing the continuing currency of realism and humanism. Featuring such artists as William Bailey, Jack Beal, William Beckman, Rackstraw Downes, Janet Fish, Alex Katz, Alfred Leslie, Michael Mazur, Alice Neel, and Philip Pearlstein, the collection has been given to the Art Institute of Chicago, which is exhibiting 125 of its finest examples. This beautiful volume includes biographies of the artists and an important critical essay by Ruth E. Fine. 126 colour illustrations