Hyperrealism

Abstract

The media theory of Marshall McLuhan is the central hinge of the Polish artist and critic Ewa Kuryluk’s survey of contemporary art production in both the USA and Europe. She argues on this basis that the new technologies of imaging and reproduction are not supplements to the creative environment but the environment itself. She develops this thesis by exploring the relationship between the mechanical and photographic rendering and the hyperrealist artwork.

Keywords:

• Mechanical reproduction
• Pop art
• hyperrealism
• Marshall McLuhan
• Nam June Paik
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Andy Warhol

Notes

1 Editor’s note: the Kapists or KPists were a dominant group of Polish painters in the 1930s, who shunned historical or literary references in their work, which was strongly influenced by French Post-Impressionism.

2 Translator’s note: Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (eds.), translated and with an introduction by Robert Hullot-Kentor (London: Continuum, 2002), 232.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ewa Kuryluk

Translated from Polish by Joanna Wolańska

Originally published as “Hipperrealizm,” in Projekt, 2/123 (1978): 37–9. This is an excerpt from Kuryluk’s book Hiperrealizm—Nowy Realizm (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1979).