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Arts & Activities, June, 2002

Richard Estes grew up near Chicago and attended the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 1956. From the very beginning, he was more interested in realistic art than in abstraction, although his special interest in painting urban landscapes developed later.

After graduation, he worked in various art-related jobs, such as book illustrating and advertising design, all the while continuing with his painting at night. With money he saved, he then took two years away from a regular job to improve his painting and develop the personal style for which he is now well-known. Since that time, Estes has always found people who want to buy his pictures.

When artists in the past wanted to paint realistically, they studied the objects they saw around them. They captured the glossy surfaces of fruit and fish, and the soft textures of velvet and lace. Mirrors often fascinated them, as did the reflective surfaces of glass goblets and polished silver. But at no time in the past were artists faced with the visual opportunities provided by the broad array of surfaces that now surround us.

Richard Estes, in particular, came to appreciate the unique realism possible from studying objects that are seen everywhere in modern American cities that did not exist earlier. He became engrossed with the reflective surfaces of plate-glass windows, chrome and plastic facings of buildings and signs, and the flowing, mirror-like painted surfaces of car bodies. He also recognized the varying transparencies of shop windows and buses that added further interest and understanding to his subjects. All of these qualities enabled him to extend his pictures, so that viewers could look through a window and, at the same time, see what was reflected in the same window.

Estes goes further than this, however, in his extensive use of photographs. In order to gather information for a painting, he visits the site and shoots up to 100 snapshots of the site, as well as details of it. He also sets up a tripod and takes a number of larger, more carefully composed photographs. Because this work cannot be done when the city is crowded, Estes gathers his information on Sundays when no one is around. He also does his own photographic processing so he can vary the light and shade of the prints and modify the focus.

Selected photographs from this collection then become the foundation for the painting. While a given scene will actually exist, he doesn't copy a photograph of it. He roughs in a scene and then uses selected parts of his collection of photographs to complete the composition. Far from imitating a photograph, he constantly uses his artistic judgment to change the heights of buildings and also the angles at which they are seen. He has been known to completely alter the design of such things as lampposts or the color of window drapes.

His typical method of working is to paint the whole scene in quite roughly, starting with the large areas and moving on to the details. He usually takes about a week to complete the first stage of a painting, during which time he works with acrylic paints that dry quickly. He then expects to spend about another eight weeks completing a picture in great detail using oil paints. The oil paints enable him to show greater depths of color and also make smoother color changes (gradations) than acrylic.

Unlike the way people normally see, Estes tries to give all parts of his paintings the same level of importance. This gives everything in his paintings an extreme sharpness that permits viewers to select the parts they would like to see in detail rather than having to accept the few parts the artist has chosen to show in focus.

While paintings by Richard Estes may appear extremely realistic, viewers may also recognize that they are also dominated by abstract shapes and forms, which adds to their power. In fact, the artist is clear in his belief that "... the abstract quality of reality is far more exciting than most of the abstract art I see."

Like many of Estes' cityscapes, this one is a view from the heart of New York City, in this case of a well-known market, Fairway, with the Empire State Building in the far distance. Like many of his other paintings, about half the picture is filled with a view of a storefront seen from about standing level. The choice of distance from the building was made to give the best balance of reflection and transparency in the store windows; although knowing Estes' working methods, what we see is likely to be the result of several photographs that were incorporated into the picture.

The painting is a masterpiece of perspective detail that goes far beyond what is possible in a single photograph. While Estes depends on photographs to help him, the diamond-like precision enables a viewer to study even a distant object as though it were the central focus. The foreground clutter of grocery carts and trolleys in this painting is as intricately painted as everything else. The repetition of the stacked carts links with the repetition of windows on buildings and also provides an opportunity to display the reflective qualities of chrome.