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Lot Essay
Robert Bechtle's paintings are a rare phenomenon at auction and '62 Chevy is a quintessential example of his iconic subject- the American automobile. Revered as one of the founders of Photorealism, Bechtle's paintings have remained relevant and his influence can be seen today on contemporary gallery walls. The appearance of '62 Chevy is a rare opportunity indeed.
'62 Chevy is the genesis of Bechtle's great subject. The text accompanying this painting at the artist's 2005 retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art succinctly captured the importance of '62 Chevy, as follows:
"The subtle and austere '62 Chevy initiated a series of single-car paintings in which Bechtle took on what he describes as the 'beastiness' of American vehicles of the period. Generally out of scale with the buildings they accompany, the cars seem poised like sentinels, their drivers nowhere to be seen. Bechtle based the format of most of these paintings on the proportions of 35-millimeter slides, making careful compositional choices both at the moment of the shutter release and throughout the slow process of realizing the source image in paint. He subjected each picture to considerable cropping in order to tether the architecture to the edges of the canvas and, in some instances, 'mutilated the car' to keep the painting from 'looking like a sales brochure.'
Bechtle has often described these cars as still-life props, a notion consistent with art historian Norman Bryson's definition of such objects as "things which, belonging to the mundane spaces of daily life, are taken so entirely for granted that familiarity itself pushes them far below the threshold of visual distinctness."
'62 Chevy is the genesis of Bechtle's great subject. The text accompanying this painting at the artist's 2005 retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art succinctly captured the importance of '62 Chevy, as follows:
"The subtle and austere '62 Chevy initiated a series of single-car paintings in which Bechtle took on what he describes as the 'beastiness' of American vehicles of the period. Generally out of scale with the buildings they accompany, the cars seem poised like sentinels, their drivers nowhere to be seen. Bechtle based the format of most of these paintings on the proportions of 35-millimeter slides, making careful compositional choices both at the moment of the shutter release and throughout the slow process of realizing the source image in paint. He subjected each picture to considerable cropping in order to tether the architecture to the edges of the canvas and, in some instances, 'mutilated the car' to keep the painting from 'looking like a sales brochure.'
Bechtle has often described these cars as still-life props, a notion consistent with art historian Norman Bryson's definition of such objects as "things which, belonging to the mundane spaces of daily life, are taken so entirely for granted that familiarity itself pushes them far below the threshold of visual distinctness."