Style of painting, printmaking and sculpture that originated in
the USA in the mid-1960s, involving the precise reproduction of
a photograph in paint or the mimicking of real objects in
sculpture. Its pioneers included the painters Malcolm Morley,
Chuck Close, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack (b 1931), Robert
Bechtle (b 1932), Robert Cottingham (b 1935), Richard McLean (b
1934), Don Eddy and the English painter John Salt (b 1937), and
sculptors such as Duane Hanson and John De Andrea. Though
essentially an American movement, it has also had exponents in
Europe, such as Franz Gertsch. In terms both of its imagery of
mass-produced objects and suburban life and of the premise of
replicating an existing artefact with no apparent comment,
Photorealism emerged as an offshoot of Pop art. Despite clear
stylistic differences, it is also close to Minimalism in its
cool, detached approach and to conceptual art in its concern
with the work of art as a physical manifestation of an idea. Its
relationship to modernism was, howev