Panorama
Chapter 2
Victor Rodriguez: Father's love 2, 2020, 172×213 cm (68×84 ins), acrylic on canvas
© Victor Rodriguez, 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Delving into the study of hyperrealism is unique in that it quickly leads us to detach ourselves from preconceived notions: “it looks like a photograph,” “it's the work of a copyist, a laborious craftsman,” “a top-of-the-class artist.”
Well, no, the first thing to do is to abandon these all-too-convenient labels to understand the origins and influences of the movement. We must accept the idea that this same family of practices is part of the lineage of movements as diverse as Academic Painting, Abstract Art, Conceptual Art, and Pop Art; even if photography remains central to the process. Some explanations are necessary to explain this diversity and to find meaning in this newfound complexity.
Anne Christine Roda: L’escargot , 2020, 88.9×144.8 cm (47×41 ins), oil on canvas
© Anne Christine Roda, 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Academic Painting
Many artists claim to be academic painters and have a strong connection with tradition.
Hyperrealism has allowed a return to easel painting; it reestablished the processes of conventional painting while stripping it of its content, demonstrating that the history of art is constantly changing.
This return to the pictorial act emerged after a long period of pictorial abstinence during which technical criteria were lost.
Nineteenth-century academic painting (Ingres, Bouguereau, Cabanel, Gérôme, etc.) valued virtuosity, precision of drawing, and a smooth finish without brushstrokes, and sought to impress with idealized beauty and technical perfection.
Similarly, hyperrealism fascinates us with its almost mechanical precision and the technical challenge it represents.
Thus, hyperrealism can be seen as a technical re-enactment of nineteenth-century academicism (mastery, illusion, seduction), but it reverses its aesthetic philosophy: instead of idealizing, it confronts the raw and often banal reality, in a critical dialogue with photography and contemporary culture.
Bruno Hasler: The Colour Purple, 2022, 25×35 cm (9.8×13.8 ins), acrylic on board
© Bruno Hasler 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Trompe l’oeil
When you see a hyperrealist painting, you don't have the illusion that you’re looking at a motorcycle, a store window, a pinball machine, or ketchup bottles.
No matter how precisely the motifs are reproduced, you know you’re looking at an image. Hyperrealism and trompe l’oeil are part of a long Western tradition of illusionist painting. Both aim to make you forget the pictorial material to create the illusion of presence. Hyperrealism takes up this cult of technique, pushing mimesis to the point of photographic illusion.
Jacques Bodin: Les boites, 2022, 146×130 cm (57½×51 ins), oil on canvas
© Jacques Bodin 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Pop Art
Richard Estes once remarked: “The trouble with Pop Art is that it’s too talkative. It's an intellectual game. Once you understand the message, it loses all interest.”
Despite this, hyperrealists acknowledge their debt to Pop Art, which paved the way for the treatment of banal
subjects. Hyperrealism borrowed the iconography of everyday life from Pop Art. It celebrates the banal image and trivializes the cultural image.
Simon Taylor: Road surface#2, 2022, 15.2×15.2 cm (6×6 ins), oil paint on panel
© Simon Taylor 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Abstraction
Hyperrealist painters were influenced by the tactics used by Abstract painters: enlargement or distortion of scale, uniformity of surface, gigantism of works, pre-eminence of the image. For example, treating a subject by isolating certain fragments from their context and reproducing them enlarged in a mimetic manner gives them a unique identity, often with a strong abstraction.
This is particularly evident in certain details of Simon Taylor’s paintings, which are revealed when observing abstract canvases.
Christoph Eberle: Car door, 2022, 30×30 cm (11.8×11.8 ins), oil on canvas
© Christoph Eberle 2025, image courtesy of the artist
Don Eddy’s enlargement of a tire section becomes a simple intersection of lines, closer to Frank Stella's work than to hyperrealism.
The coldness attributed to hyperrealist sensibility corresponds to an abstract way of seeing things without commentary or commitment. Hyperrealism is full of references to abstract painting, as evidenced by the compositions of Cottingham, Blackwell, Bowen, and Bodin in Europe.
Even the apparent frontality of Estes or Goings is composed and treated in an abstract sense. Compositions are often used as abstact elements as are the details of a car door lines in Eberle's work
