Rivaling Reality

A fireworks display of illusionistic painting, with around eighty masterworks by more than twenty artists to celebrate sixty years of international photorealism. This book pays homage to the illusory power of painting and takes readers on a worldwide stroll through the everyday culture of the modern era. Images of vehicles with gleaming chrome in middle-class residential areas, brightly colored candies, shimmering lipstick cases, deserted fast-food restaurants, and garish advertisements captivate through their technical brilliance and astounding precision, which seek to compete with photography while consciously turning away from abstraction.

The book includes work by Alexandra Averbach, John Baeder, Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Roberto Bernardi, Tom Blackwell, Pedro Campos, Andres Castellanos, Francois Chartier, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Don Eddy, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Ben Johnson, Ralph Goings, John Kacere, Richard McLean, Malcolm Morley, Johannes Mueller-Franken, Ron Kleemann, Karin Kneffel, David Parrish, Rod Penner, Gerhard Richter, John Salt, Raphaella Spence, and Craig Wylie, and more