PHOTO/PRINT/REALISM

Photorealist artists went to great lengths to render carefully selected images with the cold precision of photography. They are best known for their meticulous paintings produced in the 1970s, but they also made many highly innovative prints. Photorealist works on paper were very time-consuming and costly to produce with some taking years to complete. This exhibition features screenprints, etchings, aquatints, and lithographs by Robert Bechtle, Henry Chodkowski, Robert Cottingham, Richard Estes, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold among others. UK Professor of Art Richard B. Freeman encouraged the museum to collect prints by contemporary artists, who he curated in an annual series of Graphics exhibitions in the 1970s. This exhibition draws on the collection he built, which shows connections between photorealists and their Pop Artist predecessors. Prints by Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, James Rosenquist, and Wayne Thiebault share interests in transcribing snapshot-like images using traditional printmaking techniques.