DAVID J. WAGNER, L.L.C. John James Audubon's Birds of America Paine Art Center and Gardens David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Curator American Wildlife Art Book Signing at Smithsonian following Washington, D.C. premiere of Endangered Species at The U.S. Department of Interior Museum David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Author/Curator Home Current & Upcoming Traveling Exhibitions Past Traveling Exhibitions Online Exhibition Galleries Arts Administration & Museum Studies Events American Wildlife Art Book David J. Wagner Synopsis The birth of the modern car occurred in Germany over 150 years ago. The first internal combustion, petroleum-fueled motorcycle came out of Germany 25 years later. In the United States, Henry Ford Company was established in 1901. A year later it morphed into Cadillac Motor Company which Ford left, along with the rights to his name. A new Ford Motor Company emerged in 1903 in Detroit with backing from a dozen investors, including the Dodge brothers. LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting Produced by David J. Wagner, L.L.C. INTRODUCTION LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting Exhibition Prospectus Short (1.6 MB) LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting Exhibition Prospectus Long (3.7 MB)
Transcript
DAVID J. WAGNER, L.L.C.
John James Audubon's Birds of AmericaPaine Art Center and Gardens
David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Curator
American Wildlife Art Book Signingat Smithsonian following Washington, D.C.
premiere of Endangered Speciesat The U.S. Department of Interior Museum
David J. Wagner, Ph.D., Author/Curator
Home
Current & UpcomingTraveling Exhibitions
PastTraveling Exhibitions
OnlineExhibition Galleries
Arts Administration& Museum Studies
Events
American Wildlife ArtBook
David J. WagnerSynopsis
The birth of the modern car occurred in Germany over 150 years ago. The first internalcombustion, petroleum-fueled motorcycle came out of Germany 25 years later. In the UnitedStates, Henry Ford Company was established in 1901. A year later it morphed into CadillacMotor Company which Ford left, along with the rights to his name. A new Ford Motor Companyemerged in 1903 in Detroit with backing from a dozen investors, including the Dodge brothers.
LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism inContemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting
Produced by David J. Wagner, L.L.C.
INTRODUCTION
LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting
Exhibition Prospectus Short (1.6 MB)LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting
The same year, 1903, Harley-Davidson, was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its chief rivalwas the Indian Motorcycle Co. which emerged in 1901 out of a bicycle manufacturer inSpringfield, Massachusetts. Much has changed since those early automotive years, butperhaps nothing more so than styling in the 1940’s and after, and America’s love affair withcars and motorcycles, which has expressed itself artistically and culturally in so many ways.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, cars and motorcycles have not only been ubiquitouson the nation’s streets and highways, but also in film, top forty hits, and in painting. After theemergence of Photo-realism in the 1960’s, motor vehicles assumed a special place ofdistinction as subject matter in the iconography of American photo-realists notably, RichardEstes (b. 1931) who painted cars inhabiting urban landscapes, and two West-Coastphotorealists, Ralph Goings (b. 1928) and Don Eddy (b. 1944). Harold James Cleworth (b.1939), a Brit who immigrated to America in 1975 from London where he had been an illustratorwith the distinction of designing the first two Rolling Stones album covers and the first coverof The Who, not only established himself as one of the first generation of photorealist,automotive painters in the U.S., but also expanded the market by publishing inexpensiveposters through a network of distributors.
After the first wave of photorealists in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, younger artists produced work thatextended automotive painting in new and interesting ways, notably, in the stylistic realm ofwhat has become known as, hyperrealism. In the 1980’s, Peter Maier (b. 1945) magnified thework of the first generation of photorealists, by painting cars and motorcycles to scale andapplying actual automotive paint to canvases of side-body aluminum, sheet metal. Otherinnovators and virtuosos followed in the 1990’s and the New Millennium. Like the shinyautomobiles and motorcycles they portray, paintings of these new-age artists can becharacterized by the luster that permeates their work. Chrome ornamentation and trim;reflective side molding, hood and trunk enameled metal and high performance plastics suchas ABS, and long before that sometimes wood; glass and rubber; and interior fabrication tomeet the needs of purpose-built vehicles of all sorts: these are the surfaces which recentrealists and hyperrealists have exploited to generate true, virtuosic masterpieces. But that’snot all; some of today’s hyperrealists contextualize their paintings, with the inclusion offigurative imagery, landscape, and even antithetical properties of aging or damage offeringnew and interesting visual as well as metaphorical possibilities.
The traveling museum exhibition, LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealism in ContemporaryAutomobile and Motorcycle Painting, is comprised of over 45 paintings by 15 active realistsand hyperrealists who specialize in automobiles and motorcycles as their primary subject ofchoice, in a range of media and scale. Their collective work embodies the very best ofautomotive painting being done today. It also encompasses a broad range of car andmotorcycle styles and design from vintage vehicles of the first half of the Twentieth Century, tothe classics of the 1950’s and ‘60’s, to road and track racing, off-road vehicles, exotics, andmore. Featuring dazzling paintings that portray a spectrum of vehicles from the first half of theTwentieth Century to the present, LUSTER is a celebration of mechanical and artist design andstyle, the combination of which will have great allure with audiences throughout the UnitedStates.
David J. Wagner, Ph.D.Curator/Tour Director
LUSTER: Realism and Hyperrealismin Contemporary Automobile and Motorcycle Painting Press Release
EXHIBITION ARTISTS
(in alphabetical order)
A.D. Cook (Las Vegas, NV)Randy Ford (Eastampton, NJ)
Allan Gorman (West Orange, NJ)Marc G. Jones (Loveland, CO)
Cheryl Kelley (Northern California)Richard Lewis (Los Angeles, CA)
Lory Lockwood (New Orleans, LA)Sheryl Luxenburg (Ottawa, ON, Canada)
