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"The
work of Howard Kanovitz is one of the pioneering achievements toward the
reintegration of the realist tradition into contemporary art. Along with
parallel, but different, approaches by artists such as Philip Pearlstein,
Alfred Leslie, Richard Estes, and Malcolm Morley, Kanovitz created a basis
for a complex realism and the various facets that followed. His realism
is a fresh reappraisal of the urban environment of New 70's and thus different
from all the earlier types of realist painting. Among the several innovations
of his artistic approach is the democratization of subject matter, which
includes portraits of his friends, major figures of the New York art scene,
banal objects taken from the daily environment of the artist, popular
media imagery and objects from the world of advertising--all themes reflecting
a specific and unique iconography and a real-life approach
to the perception
of a real environment. Like the Florentine painters Masaccio, Andrea del
Castagno and Uccello in their time, Kanovitz established methods by which
it was possible to visually understand and represent the complex
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and sophisticated
cultural milieu in his time. He developed a specific technique, including
photography, opaque projection, and silk screen methods, and with these
achieved an appropriate documentation of the multilayered reality of the
New York urban scene (New Yorkers of 7-965i The Opening of 1967). In several
of his works the process of the development of the painting remains visible
to the viewer, while in other works, by means of human scale cut-out figures
standing on the floor in front of the painting, the viewing itself becomes
the theme (The People of 1968). In still other works he inaugurates a
new and ambivalent approach of revitalizing the tradition of trompe l'oeil
painting (Projected Man of 1977).
Since 1971/1972
Kanovitz's use of sophisticated forms of illusion has played an especially
important role in his work, which becomes a philosophical challenge that
questions the traditional vision of realism. The awareness of this dimension
was articulated by Kanovitz himself. "Fidelity to the subject as seen
begins to shift as elements not usually associated with subjects tak
"Fidelity
to the subject as seen begins to shift as elements not usually associated
with subjects take on symbolic importance."
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