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'63 Bel Air
Artist
Robert Bechtle
(Born 1932, United States; died 2020, United States)
Date1973
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 48 x 69 in. (121.92 x 175.26 cm)
Framed: 48 3/4 x 69 3/4 x 2 1/8 in. (123.83 x 177.17 x 5.4 cm)
Framed: 48 3/4 x 69 3/4 x 2 1/8 in. (123.83 x 177.17 x 5.4 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Endowment Fund
Object number1996.14
Status
Not on viewSignedverso, u.l.c. stretcher triangle joint, "BECHTLE/'63 BEL AIR/1973"
Copyright© Robert Bechtle
Category
Label TextRobert Bechtle has spent his career documenting his Bay Area surroundings. After taking snapshots of manicured suburban lawns, stucco homes, parking lots, and parked cars with a seemingly dispassionate vision, Bechtle translates the photographs into paint on canvas. Photographs often serve as source material for painters, but for Bechtle and other Photorealist artists, the photograph creates new subject matter and becomes a subject itself, an acknowledgment that photographs have become the filter through which we experience reality.
Bechtle began painting directly from photographs in the early 1960s as an alternative to the Bay Area Figurative tradition. By the time he painted ’63 Bel Air, 1973, he had developed a radical and apparently unromantic visual philosophy. While his seemingly uncomposed images suggest the casual immediacy of a snapshot, Bechtle spends weeks or months building up his painted surfaces, layering feathery brushstrokes that modulate the effect of light on objects and demonstrating his commitment to illusionism. This soft painterliness is modified by Bechtle’s sense of compositional restraint. While many Photorealists—Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, and Richard McLean, and others—engage a drama of accumulated details and surface reflections, Bechtle distinguishes himself with atmospheric minimalism.
The irony of Bechtle’s work is that the “neutrality” he speaks of is a fallacy. His paintings depict people or places that have been a part of his life. From Edward Hopper’s lonely New York vignettes to Ed Ruscha’s humorously laconic views of Los Angeles, American artists have found ways of portraying their world with a mix of detachment and sentiment. Bechtle’s work is a peculiar combination of both.
Bechtle began painting directly from photographs in the early 1960s as an alternative to the Bay Area Figurative tradition. By the time he painted ’63 Bel Air, 1973, he had developed a radical and apparently unromantic visual philosophy. While his seemingly uncomposed images suggest the casual immediacy of a snapshot, Bechtle spends weeks or months building up his painted surfaces, layering feathery brushstrokes that modulate the effect of light on objects and demonstrating his commitment to illusionism. This soft painterliness is modified by Bechtle’s sense of compositional restraint. While many Photorealists—Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, and Richard McLean, and others—engage a drama of accumulated details and surface reflections, Bechtle distinguishes himself with atmospheric minimalism.
The irony of Bechtle’s work is that the “neutrality” he speaks of is a fallacy. His paintings depict people or places that have been a part of his life. From Edward Hopper’s lonely New York vignettes to Ed Ruscha’s humorously laconic views of Los Angeles, American artists have found ways of portraying their world with a mix of detachment and sentiment. Bechtle’s work is a peculiar combination of both.