Linda Chase

With an Introduction by Salvador Dali

This book presents the era of hyper-realism: Ralph Goings, Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Tom Blackwell, and many others. Works by these artists who are at the same time pioneers and masters, lavishly illustrate these pages. Linda Chase relates the latest adventure of figurative art, and Salvador Dali has provided an introduction. Hyperrealism is neither a movement nor a school. As the natural offspring of our superindustrialized society, hyper-realism utilizes the traditional methods of painting to desanctify it.
Contrary to the realist painter, the hyperrealist does not appear, at first, to impose his personality on reality. He rather hides behind the represented object, he carves actuality out of reality. But, by a curious turn of the objects towards the painter, each work-inspite of itself and inspite of the artist-points to its creator. In a world where every- thing is questioned, attacked, and debunked, where every aspect of the environment appears in all its bareness, hyperrealism records the saga of the motorcycle, the drugstore, the silo, and sex-such as served up by the implacable daily press.

"Every telephone box," says Salvador Dali, "is the parallelepipedical holograph of our visible reality, an existential mesozoa. Each telephone resembles the station at Perpignan, it is a legi intimus It is one's home country." Well, in this country that has turned surreal by force of reality, everybody can, by turning the pages of this book, freely carve out their own part of the dream."

76 pages, 96 illustrations with 37 in color.

Jacket illustration: John Kacere Light purple panties yellow dress, rear view. 1972.