Why Does The Art World Downgrade Hyper-Realism?

Why Does The Art World Hate Hyper-Realism?

Another year, another portrait competition result that mystifies me at the prestigious National Portrait Gallery.

The winners of the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Awards have been announced. This used to be the BP Portrait Prize, and has always proved popular with the art-loving public. Over the years, some stunning works have been exhibited, and many of the exhibitors have gone on to forge successful careers in the arts.

So what is my gripe? It is that as a lifelong art lover, I find that those paintings that show the most technical ability - borne of talent and thousands of hours of hard work - are not adequately rewarded with prizes.

Of course that is my opinion, and art is subjective. That is one of the beauties about it -you can walk into a gallery and be absolutely transfixed or moved by a work of art without understanding exactly why, and with your companion seeming non-plussed at the same work.

I’m talking about the actual art here, not about art markets, which, as Orlando Whitfield exposed in his fabulous memoir, All That Glitters, about his unwitting friendship with a major art fraudster, is not really about the quality -or even real worth - of the art at all.

The prize is meant to recognise and award the best portrait. Of course different judges will have different criteria as well as subjective taste. But my argument is that ground-breaking originality in art has not progressed hugely since Picasso’s invention of different styles from cubism to using depictions of African masks as faces in his Demoiselles D’Avignon and since Marcel Duchamp presented a urinal as a piece of art in 1917. Everything since - abstract expressionism, whether the Delauneys or Jackson Pollock; Lichtenstein, the 3D impasto of Frank Auerbach, a tin of the artist’s shit presented by Piero Manzoni in 1961; the US flags of Jasper Johns; Damien Hirst’s dissected sharks, unmade beds (and I like Tracey Emin), Chris Ofili’s paintings made of dung, Sarah Lucas’s fag end picture, Louise Bourgeois’s incredible spider sculptures, Cornelia Parker’s ingenious conceptual art - has not been as subversive, as shocking, as that urinal. The urinal, signed R. Mutt, said that *anything* could be presented as art. It was the ultimate in originality. It foresaw by almost 100 years the way value can be ascribed to an arbitrary object simply by declaring it art - which led to Banksy selling a painting at auction for $25.4 million *even after it had been partially shredded*.

Of course we can’t be defeatist about originality in art being dead just because Picasso was a genius and Duchamp was mischievous, extreme, and prescient. Artists who introduce innovative techniques and styles keep art stimulating. There were dozens of exciting new techniques even before Picasso and Duchamp: Impressionism’s use of blurring and light; Seurat’s pointillism, the swirly splendour of Van Gogh. And of course subject matter in art has evolved over the ages from religious to royalty to society figures to the working class. It was still quite revolutionary when Jules Bastien-Lepage and those following him, such as the Glasgow Boys, painted a tramp, or workers in the fields, in luminous, gorgeous hues previously reserved for the moneyed.

So yes, each artist who adopts a new style or who adapts an existing one is interesting and exciting to those who love art. It is fascinating to look at the progression of art from that of cave dwellers through ancient times, mediaeval paintings, the Renaissance, right through to the present day. The 20C was full of innovations in art, but so was any century you care to examine, artists taking earlier works as inspiration or influence and building on them in terms of broadening the styles and techniques that were seen as acceptable by the art establishment. Sometimes they couldn’t improve on the Old Masters. But each new age brought in pioneers as well as technically fantastic artists capable of creating exquisite paintings.

But although creating new aesthetic styles and breaking boundaries is important if it opens new doors in the art world, technique is also vital. Intrinsic talent is what lifts an artist above the ordinary, whether you are talking about Vermeer and Frans Hals or Banksy. These artists have vision and ability. And it takes vast skill and years of hard graft to be able to produce hyper realist work. Yet this seems to be ignored by those who judge the NPG portrait prize.

The winner of the first prize this year was Moira Cameron, for her self-portrait ‘A Life Lived’. It is a colourful, quirky, cartoonish, faux naif depiction of a woman sitting in an armchair. It is bright and amusing, the armchair painted with the skill of an illustrator, showing Cameron is not a child drawing cartoon figures. The whole is a painting I would love to see in a reception or waiting room. The style is idiosyncratic for a portrait but obviously not in illustration or cartoons, where it is common. So is it original? Yes, in the national portrait Gallery, but such kooky cartoon characters can be seen in dozens of comics. It is striking painted on canvas, in bold colours and framed, and I would smile as I passed it in an exhibition, but would I owe it first prize over the second and third prize winners, who have exhibited breathtaking capability as well as imagination.

The second prize winner is Tim Benson for his excellent, painterly depiction of Cliff, an outreach worker. Cliff comes alive in this beautiful portrait, a spot of light on his nose. Benson likes to chronicle the lives of people who are not in the public eye, and this oil painting was part of a series showcasing people who have had facial medical or surgical problems. Cliff had his jaw broken when he was a child, and it was never set, so it remains slightly asymmetrical. Who can fail to be touched by this living portrait of a man who did not receive the healthcare that we all deserve in life? The fact that despite this injustice, he dedicated his career to helping others adds to the poignancy. A portrait tells you so much. The brushstrokes are visible when you examine the portrait close up; from a distance they look utterly realistic, the different shades and textures of skin we all have. This is a gorgeous painting.

The third prize winner is a realistic painting of an old lady by Martyn Harris entitled ‘Memories.’ It is so life-like that it could be a photograph. It moved me immensely. The talent required to render a portrait that looks like a photograph, and the skill required to choose a subject that will touch many viewers and that is universal, and moreover, the hours of work that must have been entailed in achieving the ability to paint in such a lifestyle way, like the old Masters, Leonardo and Caravaggio, is immense. And yet this painting only won third prize. To me, and to many other viewers not swayed by fashion, this is by far the better portrait when compared with Cameron’s sketchy figure, exhibiting more ability, natural painterly skill, technique, devotion, arduous toil, and sensitivity.