Exactitude: Hyperrealist Art Today Hardcover – September 7, 2009

Many paintings of classic cars, diners, truck grills, candy wrappers, tin toys, and the eyes of "beautiful" women. I bought this because I was interested in hyperrealist art, but this book cured me of that. A great many of these paintings are just plain hollow, like a very fancy cake made of cardboard and plaster for display purposes. It is all about the technique and not the art at all. I looked at these paintings and honestly wondered why anyone would want to devote years of their lives to painting such things with such relentless details. It's like autism in paint form. It's got plenty of pictures, I'll give you that. And it's big. But I am giving my copy to the library, because I know I will never look at it again. Dead inside.

I ordered this book soon after hearing about it on Facebook and when I got it the first thing that struck me was it's size - It's big and quite thick. The book covers much of the hyperrealist/photorealist artwork that is emerging from a new generation of artists. I think all of them have shown their art at Plus One which is a major photo/hyper realist gallery in London. The chapters are artist based and each has his version of how and why - which is not that interesting to me ( I am a photorealist - look me up ) but the images are outstanding and unlike Louis K Meisel's books the printing is of the highest quality.

Buy It! This is a beautiful book; well written with marvelous photographs.

beautiful book... loaded with excellent images

If you don't have the three Photorealism books by Louis Meisel 'Exactitude' will sort of bring you up to date. Meisel's last book came out in 2002 and it firmly related art of the title: Photorealism at the Millenium. Since then, though, the genre has moved on and to judge by the subject matter of the artists in these pages Photorealism doesn't really capture the feel so Clive Head used the term Exactiude. The precision and clarity is still evident but one of the main ingredients of Photorealism was capturing American commonplace, many artists in these pages have moved completely away from this.The twenty-seven painters in the book (with ten from north America and ten from Britain) are arranged alphabetically kicking off with John Beader. One of the first generation Photorealists, although Meisel, in his first book, included him in the 'Artists related to Photorealism' section. Here he is, still creating wonderful diner paintings full of sparkle and wit. To show how things have moved on the next artist is Paul Beliveau. So completely different from Baeder in subject matter: close-ups of book spines.Beliveau like other artists in the book: Pedro Campos; Cynthia Poole; Cesar Santander have chosen to include plenty of print typography in their work, which, to my mind, is probably the hardest sort of painting to achieve perfection, especially when painted on canvas. Duplicate letters have to look exactly the same, something Santander with his close-ups of tin boxes seems to achieve with ease. Wonderful to look at but I thought they seemed to be more technical exercises than creative.The subject matter chosen by the book's painters is, mostly, either exteriors or still life close-ups. Exceptions are David Ligare who returns to the classical past with his mythological content and the fantasy architectural content of Carl Laubin. Simon Hennessey is the only portrait painter in the book concentrating on eyes. City and industrial landscapes get a good showing from David Finnegan, Clive Head, Ben Johnson, Christian Marsh, Robert Neffson, Francisco Rangel and Steve Whitehead.The paint of choice is oil or acrylic for everyone except for Andrew Holmes who uses colored pencils on paper (I wonder if this actually paint in a pencil) and achieves some incredible finishes on his trucks and mirror looking tankers.This is a thick chunky book (check out the Product Description) with 550 paintings. Another reviewer has commented on the reproduction in relation to the Meisel books. His three and this one are all printed with a 175 screen on reasonable matt art paper in each case. My impression is that this book is slightly lighter in printing quality and lacks true blacks especially when compared to 'Photorealism at the Millennium' title. Print relies heavily on the quality of the originals, either digital or transparencies.Overall I thought this was a fascinating look at realist painting with enough variation of subject matter to appeal to anyone interested contemporary art.### LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

Exquisite, meticulous book worthy of the art so beautifully presented. This is one of the most scrumptious art books I own. And I own quite a few. Page after page of excellent reproductions of amazing work. Even at it’s original price, a good deal. This is full of the best of the best.

As art books go, this one is an absolute stonker; a large-format, doorstep-sized hardback book, it's a very impressive survey of Photorealist/Hyperrealist artists and their work up to 2009.Beautifully presented, there are 550 large illustrations, 545 of them in full colour representing the work of 27 artists; it is undoubtedly a very useful “go-to” general reference on the subject, though it is far from comprehensive; it would make a good starting point for those wishing to study this form of art in detail.I do not work in this field myself, but I do have students who aspire to this kind of work and I find it fascinating as a painter to observe and advise on the practical (and technical) processes of producing this kind of artwork in a creative way.This volume (which is still available for very reasonable prices) should be on the shelves of all who appreciate this approach to painting and drawing.

Printed on good quality paper and containing many excellent images. I cannot fault it.

For anyone interested in 21st century hyperrealism this is an absolute must. A large format book laden with images of some of the works of nearly 30 prominent exponents working in the field today (plus brief artist profiles). As an artist I have found the book to be utterly inspiring - it has certainly made me want to go and see the works up close to see exactly how the paint was applied. Worth every penny!

Excellent gift for an outstanding A level Art student.

Got his book this morning and it was much bigger than I expected. Which was fantastic! Covers the history of hyperrealism and photorealism to begin with, followed by a sizeable catalogue of hyperrealist artists and large, colour images of their work.I look forward to reading the book at a later date, but I've just GOT TO go and do some painting first! - an inspiring book of great value in many ways.