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Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective

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Robert Bechtle has been a creative force in California art since the 1960s, yet his name remains practically unknown outside the Bay Area artists group. This very fine monograph by Janet Bishop, designed as a catalogue to accompany the traveling exhibition of this works, should help to mend that sin of omission. The style of writing is warm and informative and, in many ways, in keeping with Bechtle's vision of the world he paints!

One quick perusal of the many reproductions of his major works in this book quickly leaves the impression that Bechtle understands and successfully captures the quality of light that is peculiar to California. His street scenes of angled cars and bungalows are flooded with light and shadow. Though his art movement classification is Photorealism, Bechtle goes beyond mere photo copying techniques. His work is more about our lifestyle and our living compartments normally looked upon as mere blocks of space in which we function. Bechtle enhances everything he paints with a sunny 'romanticism' if you will. His art is more about a love affair with the atmosphere's effect on the mundane places we inhabit than it is with simple reproduction of images and landscapes.

For the art lover of realism and for those who respect the prodigious gifts of representational artists, this book is a must for the library. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 05

This book by Janet Bishop was published in conjunction with the first major retrospective of Robert Bechtle, a San Francisco Bay Area photo realist in his 70s. Until recently, Bechtle, who paints street scenes and rows of tract houses, was known only to Bay Area collectors and critics. Now, because of this exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art which then travels to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Bechtle is receiving deserving national exposure. Bechtle, like the rest of the photo realists, such as Richard Estes, Chuck Close and Ralph Goings, believes that by painting exactly what a photograph reveals, he is painting the truest and most accurate form of realism, because he is removing the artist and the artist's emotions and feelings from his paintings. But what this book so aptly suggests is that even photographers, who use the camera to capture a scene, infuse the subject with their identity: the photographer chooses the subject, crops the photograph in a certain manner, decides whether the photograph will be in color or black and white, and how the subject will be juxtaposed with other images. This is exactly what Bechtle does in his paintings. One can't help but think that his choice of lower middle class suburban streets and houses is a comment on the banality of existence and American consumerism. Bishop does a first-rate job in this book, selecting paintings from Bechtle's entire career, which spans four decades. Moreover, Bishop includes excellent commentaries from critics with different and interesting perspectives. A fine effort.

For those of you who missed the Bechtle retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art or the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, you should be aware that The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. has announced that it will be the final venue for the retrospective from March 4 to June 4, 2006.

I drove from Jackson, Mississippi to the Modern Museum of Ft. Worth see the Retrospective of Robert Bechtle's work. I am an artist myself and was astounded at the collection in this exhibit. The book does a superb job of presenting photos of the paintings in the collection. Additionally, the museum store at The Modern had none of these books in stock so it was fortunate that I ordered it when I did.

This is a great book about a great artist. I saw the pictures in original and they are very good reproduced in this book. Who loves photorealism should have it.

Robert Bechtle A Retrospective encompasses the artist's work from the 1960s to today, published to coincide with a major retrospective exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There are four essays along with a text commentary which accompanies the plates. The essays are titled: Robert Becthle: Painting As We Are, A Place in the Sun, Photographic Guilt: the Painter and the Camera, and Alameda Gran Torino. The first essay discusses the artists' work in relation to his chronology, second looks at his paintings in terms of light and then humour and the third essay is self explanatory from its title. Following the section of plates is a Chronology, Exhibition History, Selected Bibliography and a Catalogue of the Exhibition.

The book is illustrated throughout in colour and black and with, the latter being either black and white snap shots or reproductions of charcoal drawings. There are 91 plates, mostly one to a page with a few occupying a double page, plus the many illustrations accompanying the essays and other sections.

There is inevitably a certain amount of repetition in the various essays, and while constant mention is made of Bechtle's use of photography and methods of transference of the images to canvass, none of them discusses in any depth how he his actually applies his paint. While it is frequently pointed out that the finished pictures from a distance, and of course in reproduction as in this book, look photorealistic, we are reminded that in fact the paint on closer inspection is relatively freely applied. Unfortunately we have to take the writers' word on this for there is not one life size detail of an oil painting, the nearest thing is the picture introducing the plates which is about one third life size, but it gives little away. I find this disappointing, it is akin to viewing the exhibition but not being allowed to venture any closer than around 15 feet to the pictures. The water colours and charcoal drawings, being initially smaller do not present such a problem.

It is nonetheless a handsome well produced volume; we can clearly glean the Becthle's primary subjects: cars, urban landscapes and people known to the artist; and the reproductions as here even greatly reduced in reproduction still manage to convey the freedom and vitality of the work.

The mere act of transforming what might be considered an average snapshot into a work of art is Bechtle's magic. Quiet streets, mundane automobiles, and people from a home photo album take on an air of the sublime, proving that the greatest power of photorealism lies not in the technique, but in the process of transforming a snapshot into an irrefutable memory.

edward hopper ... robert bechtle ... william eggleston ...

the great american image creator.

the only book of bechtle. great!!