MOCA to Investigate Photorealism and Its Influence

Amy Sherald, The lesson of falling leaves, 2017. MOCA

Chuck Close is getting a high-profile group show… and MOCA is doing another of the sweeping historical surveys that made the institution's reputation. The highlight of the museum's fall 2024 schedule is "Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art Since 1968." It will span 40 artists, from the original group of 60s/70s Photorealists (Close, Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack) to contemporaries whose work is here (re)presented in the context of the movement (John Ahearn, Barclay Hendricks, Amy Sherald, Kehinde Wiley) and younger artists drawing on Photorealist precedents (Gina Beavers, Sayre Gomez, Christine Wang).

Anna Katz and Paula Kroll organized. "Ordinary People" will run at MOCA Grand Ave. Nov. 24, 2024, to May 4, 2025, and will be accompanied by a publication.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Judging creative skill and technical know-how are tougher to do in today's era of a lot of art being abstract for abstract's sake (or non-figurative for non-figurative's sake) or so many pieces being like a blend of wacky stage props and funky decorations for hipsters' big-glass houses. So MOCA's Photorealism exhibit is a nice change of pace and wouldn't be out of place at the incomplete Lucas museum.
japecake said…
Amy Sherald's work is looking less and less interesting and more and more market-driven comfortable/recognizable over time; endless slight variations on the same thing that might be credibly generated (if not now, soon) by AI. (She wouldn't be the first/only, by any means.) Is she really going to keep doing grisaille figures on a solid color background for another thirty years?