paintings of photos

Sitting in the cozy livingroom-esque seating area of Boston Common Coffee Co. in the north end, patrons are surrounded by Pottery Barn inspired 90's prep goodness, fit for sipping cappuccino and listening to Dave Mathews in Abercombie for hours, chatting about Friends. The walls are laiden with beautiful, lush, vibrant paintings of Italy and the North End, beautifully rendered in vibrant color and confidant, bold bush strokes, hung as densely and enthusiastically as the paintings are composed.

There is something fresh and contemporary about these paintings - crisp, momentary.

With Lens distortion.

That's when it becomes clear that these are paintings of snapshots; paintings of photographs.

At some point in our contemporary re-embrace of hyperrealism, photographs have crossed the line from reference material to subject material. What does this mean for painting? When the photograph itself becomes the subject, does this imply that it is the true source of inspiration? When paintings strive to capture perspectives, moments, and experiences that are either impossible or extraordinarily/prohibitively difficult to capture in person, does the painter cede ground to the photographer?

Then comes the issue of paintings of poor photographs. Even expertly rendered paintings can be compromised when they include the shortcomings of photography rather than exceed them. Distortion, exposure problems, and other amateur photography problems appear with regularity in hyperrealism - even in magazines and galleries, and are sypmtomatic of using a photograph as subject rather than as reference (preferably, many as reference). The most frequent is plane-of-camera errors, which result in buildings squished at the top and bulging in nauseating ways. The composition might be spot-on, but this tell marks the artist not only as an undisciplined photographer but undisciplined artist as well.

But if the true capturer of beauty is the shutter and not the brush, what then?

Some great contemporary impressionism, perhaps?