Art: Get Real

I've listened to enough "What is Art?" debates to know not to delve into that topic too far. It's difficult to define without insulting somebody. If someone asks for my opinion on the topic, I usually say art is a "creative expression". Seems all-encompassing enough.

I do have a hard time accepting anything and everything as "art", though. I love art history. I love old, old art. It's not always the most exciting or interesting, but I dig it. To create such stunning, realistic work in rather difficult settings makes it hard for me to enjoy a lot of the post-modern art (for example). I appreciate it for what it is, but it'll never be my thing.

The most impressive works to me have always been in the realm of Realism, Hyperrealism, Photorealism... whatever you'd like to call it. The amount of detail and precision to create these paintings/sculptures is mind-boggling.

Chuck Close has always been one of my favorite realists, and artists in general. He created enormous, photo-realist paintings until he suffered a massive spinal artery collapse, leaving him paralyzed. Despite his injury, he continues painting his huge portraits, though his style has changed to accommodate for his limitations in mobility. Instead of the intricate, photo-real details, he paints in colored orbs which from afar, create equally impressive portraits.

Recently, my love for realism expanded into the 3-D realm with hyperreal sculpture. There's something eerie about most of the works I've seen. Sam Jinks was the first I noticed, and his sculptures are downright creepy. He makes them out of silicon, paint, and real human hair.

Another well-known, realist sculptor is Duane Hanson. His pieces were made from fiberglass casts of real people. When he first started casting in 1966, his subject matter tackled violent situations. He had a piece about a back-room abortion procedure, a drug addict, a motorcycling accident victim, Vietnam and a race riot.

Hanson's later works abandoned these outwardly politically-charged, graphic themes and stuck to the subtle atrocities that encompass ordinary American life -- tourism, shopping, eating and lounging. His fat, unattractive sculptures make a pretty obvious social commentary on Americana.

Ron Mueck began his career making puppets and photo-realistic props for television and films. His work appeared in Labyrinth and Jim Henson's The Storyteller, along with various advertisements.

Mueck transitioned his work into fine art, creating hyper-real, silicon sculptures. Mueck's work presents people, often looked tired, sickly or grotesque. One of his more haunting pieces, Dead Dad, is about two-thirds the natural human scale and uses Mueck's own hair. Rather self-explanatory, the piece presents his father: small, dead and nude. In a gallery setting, viewers literally must step around the silicon corpse.

For Mueck, and all the other realist sculptors, space and presentation play an obvious role in how the work is presented. Unlike two-dimensional art, the sculpture forces the viewer to interact in some way. And when the work is mimicking life so closely, it plays with our subconscious.

I often relate hyper-real sculpture to a bit of information I picked up in my Psychology class at Rutgers, but in reference to realistic, computer-generated humans. There's something eerie and unnerving about the characters in The Polar Express (for example) -- they are very close to real, but not quite. Something about the human psyche is turned off by these not-quite-real people.

The sculptors I've mentioned obviously have tackled our aversions to the almost-real by using it to their advantage. None of these works are particularly "pretty" -- they're violent, disturbing, weird. Even the most subdued works, such as Hanson's comical take on American life, remain unnerving. When a work of art is able to tap into your emotions, I consider it to be very successful. These sculptures definitely move me more than any Pollock ever has.