photorealism

Capturing Visual Reality: Close, Wide, Random, Complete

Mueck's Sculpture In Bed

Image of Ron Mueck's In Bed (2005); Image Credit: Brooklyn Museum

Ron Mueck is an Australian sculptor of the "hyperrealist" school. He got his start working for Jim Henson and on Labyrinth (1986). Mueck became known to the art world for his 1996 Dead Dad, a two-thirds life-size sculpture of the artist's father moments after passing away. Mueck's sculpture attempts to reproduce human beings in all of their external reality. That is to say, while there are no organs on the inside, so far as what everyone but surgeons can see of a person, Mueck depicts, down to the last follicle. 

Lee Price and Exposed Eating

bird's eye view of a woman eating a lot of food in a pretty living room

Lee Price, Sunday.  H/t to Jezebel, Sociological Images

Lee Price paints photorealistic portraits of her subject (usually herself) consuming food that we might label "bad:" for example, McDonalds, cupcakes, pie, and so on. While Dr. Lisa Wade's piece for Sociological Images focused on the way these paintings make public what is often a shameful, private act and elevate it through the use of "high" medium (painting), I was most interested in the way these images seem to acknowledge these commonly held beliefs about indulgent consumption even as they complicate them. I'd like to take a stab at raising more questions about Price's work and how it formulates an argument about bodies, pleasure, shame, and excess. Pictures after the jump are NSFW.

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