When Photorealist painting surfaced in the late 1960s, it drew a fair amount of attention from the art world and generated excitement among collectors. In the face of the abstruse abstraction of Minimal and much Post-Minimal art and the heavy theorizing that surrounded these styles, it must have seemed to many to be a breath of fresh air. Its subject was readily recognizable and its themes readily understood, or so most people thought at the time. And then there was that eye-fetching realism—or again, so people thought, since the images looked like photographs, which viewers believed do not lie.

To many, Photorealism must have seemed like a descendant of Pop Art, building on the representational imagery that Pop daringly reintroduced to art after a decade dominated by Abstract Expressionism and post-painterly abstraction. And similarly, it seemed to deal with popular culture, though in a way that would never be confused with Pop. Charles Bell painted gumball machines, John Baeder diners, Robert Cottingham garish neon signs, Robert Bechtle California suburban culture and Richard Estes airless, silent, urban streets, often focusing on slick Modernist ’60s architecture that contrasted dramatically with the revival-style buildings, even skyscrapers, of pre–World War II New York.

While Pop art appropriated both the look and style of vernacular or popular art, transforming “low art” into “high art,” Photorealism used low art—commercial signs, pinball machines, suburban tract housing and diners—as its subject matter rather than appropriating its style. The style of Photorealism instead came from snapshot photography, not billboards, advertisements and magazine or newspaper images. While Warhol and Rauschenberg had incorporated a range of silk-screened photographic images from the mass media into their art, the Super-Realists approached the photographic image in an entirely different way: They took their own photographs and then painstakingly imitated them in paintings. Many used an airbrush, and those who did not often used fine brushes that resulted in a smooth, cool surface that gave no hint that the work was a painting and not a large photograph. These seemingly nonobjective, emotionless images shared with Pop and Minimal art a cool, deadpan presentation.

Sculpture is often linked to Photorealism, right or wrongly, especially the work of Duane Hanson. Sometimes labeled Verism, because of its illusionism, this sculpture is generally lumped with Photorealist painting under the umbrella term Super-Realism. As sculpture, Hanson’s figures did not look like a photograph. Yet, his realistically painted fiberglass figures dressed in real clothing and equipped with real accessories, gave the work a startling life-like quality that shocked many viewers when they discovered they were looking at art, and not living human beings. While Hanson’s deceiving illusionism is the lure for many viewers, the strength of the work lies in its biting social criticism. His people are too fat, bored with the rote routine of their jobs or are mindless consumers. They live in an unfulfilling, spiritless world, one that seemed to many to correspond to the silent, lifeless world of so much Photorealist painting.

Despite its parallels with Pop and Minimal art, Photorealism has not shared the critical acclaim of these movements, though it certainly has its critical adherents and collector support. Most art-historical surveys tend to treat the movement more as a footnote than a chapter, and auction prices for works by Bechtle, Goings and Bell tend to be a fraction of those for Lichtenstein, Warhol, Donald Judd, or Sol LeWitt, for example. Of the group, only Estes and Hanson do well in the marketplace, although even their prices do not begin to touch those of major Pop, Minimal, Post-Minimal and Conceptual artists. They are also the sole artists in the group who are included in most art-historical surveys.