Don Eddy (born 1944) is a contemporary representational painter.Martin, Alvin. "Spaces of the Mind: New paintings by Don Eddy," ''Arts'', February 1987, p. 22–3.Baker, Kenneth
"Don Eddy,"
''Artforum'', March 1972. Retrieved March 4, 2021. He gained recognition in American art around 1970 amid a group of artists that critics and dealers identified as Photorealists or Hyperrealists, based on their work's high degree of verisimilitude and use of photography as a resource material.Rosenberg, Harold. Review, "Sharp-Focus Realism," ''The New Yorker'', February 5, 1972.Schjeldahl, Peter
"Realism—A Retreat to the Fundamentals?"
''The New York Times'', December 24, 1972. Retrieved March 4, 2021.Chase, Linda, Nancy Foote and Ted McBurnett. "The Photo-Realists: 12 Interviews," ''Art in America'', November–December 1972.Battcock, Gregory. ''Super Realism: A Critical Anthology'', New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. Retrieved March 4, 2021. Critics such as

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Educatio ...

(as well as Eddy himself) have resisted such labels as superficially focused on obvious aspects of his painting while ignoring its specific sociological and conceptual bases, dialectical relationship to abstraction, and

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

investigations into perception and being; Kuspit wrote: "Eddy is a kind of an alchemist … isart transmutes the profane into the sacred—transcendentalizes the base things of everyday reality so that they seem like sacred mysteries."Kuspit, Donald. ''Don Eddy: The Art of Paradox'', New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2002.Eddy, Don. "The Movement That Was Not," ''RH Art Magazine'', 2012.Wallach, Amei. "Reflections of Things Not Seen: The Paintings of Don Eddy," ''Don Eddy: From Logic to Mystery'', Durham, NC: Duke University Museum of Art, 2000. Eddy has worked in cycles, which treat various imagery from different formal and conceptual viewpoints, moving from detailed, formal images of automobile sections and storefront window displays in the 1970s to perceptually challenging mash-ups of still lifes and figurative/landscapes scenes in the 1980s to mysterious multi-panel paintings in his latter career.Raynor, Vivien
"Whitney Exhibit Looks Into the World of the Car,"
''The New York Times'', May 6, 1984, Sect. CN, p. 11. Retrieved March 4, 2021.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', January 2, 1987. Retrieved March 4, 2021. He lives in New York City with his wife, painter

Leigh Behnke Leigh Behnke (born 1946) is an American painter based in Manhattan in New York City, who is known for multi-panel, representational paintings that investigate perception, experience and interpretation.Smithsonian American Archives of Art"Don Eddy ...

.Harrison, Helen A
"Art Reviews: 'Together Working,'"
''The New York Times'', February 27, 2000. Retrieved November 8, 2019.Smithsonian American Archives of Art
"Don Eddy and Leigh Behnke Papers,"
Collection. Retrieved November 8, 2019.

Early life and career

Eddy was born in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

in 1944. In early adolescence, he worked at his father's auto body shop doing custom paint jobs, an experience that familiarized him with Southern California car culture, the airbrush as a painting tool, and working-class concern for craft—all factors in his later art.Urban, William and Robert Paschal. "Interview: Don Eddy," ''Airbrush Digest'', July/August 1984, p. 18.Johnson, Neil. "Don Eddy: Master of Reality," ''Airbrush Action 7'', November–December 1991, p. 10.Bonito, Virginia Ann
''Don Eddy: The Resonance of Realism in the Art of Post War America''
ArtRegister Press, 1999. He studied art history and fine arts at the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

(BFA, 1967; MFA, 1969), also working as a snapshot photographer for a tourist agency.Martin, Alvin. "Don Eddy: Image, Reflection, Dream," ''Don Eddy'', New York: Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 1987. After exploring and rejecting the prevailing mode of abstract expressionist subjectivity, he was drawn to the more accessible work of

Surrealist Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...

René Magritte René François Ghislain Magritte (; 21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist known for his depictions of familiar objects in unfamiliar, unexpected contexts, which often provoked questions about the nature and bound ...

and the commercialized realism of Pop artist

James Rosenquist James Rosenquist (November 29, 1933 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist and one of the proponents of the pop art movement. Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advertising a ...

, both of which juxtaposed incongruous images in a single painting space.Gokduman, Safak Günes. "Don Eddy," ''Artist Modern'', April, 2010. After graduating, Eddy completed PhD coursework in art history at

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

while continuing to paint. By 1970, he had shifted from early mixed-media and figurative work and turned to car-culture imagery and the Paasche H airbrush from his youth (which he has used his entire career) in works focused on the nature of space in painting.''Airbrush Digest''. "Interview, Don Eddy," July/August 1984, Cover, p. 16–23, 58–9. He received his first widespread recognition through exhibitions such as "Sharp-Focus Realism" (

Sidney Janis Sidney Janis (July 8, 1896 – November 23, 1989) was a wealthy clothing manufacturer and art collector who opened an art gallery in New York in 1948. His gallery quickly gained prominence, for he not only exhibited work by the Abstract Expressio ...

Gallery) and

Documenta 5 documenta 5 was the fifth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 30 June and 8 October 1972 in Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hes ...

(1972), "California Realist Painters" ( Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1973) and "Hyper-Realisme Americaine, Realism European" ( Centre National d'Art Contemporain, 1974).Kramer, Hilton. "And Now...Pop Art: Phase II," ''The New York Times'', January 16, 1972, Sect. D, p. 19.Kurtz, Bruce. "Documenta 5: A Critical Preview," ''Arts Magazine'', Summer 1972.Santa Barbara Museum of Art. ''California Realist Painters'', Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1973.Centre National d'Art Contemporain. ''Hyperrealistes Americains/Realistes Europeens'', Paris: Centre National d'Art Contemporain, 1973. After moving to New York City in the early 1970s, he continued to appear in prominent surveys at the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

and

San Antonio Museum of Art The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio ...

, among others, while establishing a longtime relationship with New York dealer Nancy Hoffman, whose gallery has put on his solo exhibitions from 1974 to 2020.Whitney Museum of American Art. "Auto Icons", New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1979.San Antonio Museum
''Real, Really Real, Super Real''
San Antonio, TX: San Antonio Museum Association, 1981. Retrieved March 9, 2021.Shere, Charles. "An impressive show of airbrush painting," ''The Oakland Tribune'', February 28, 1982.Graves, David C. ''Don Eddy: An Event of Consciousness'', New York: Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 2019.

Process

Eddy paints using a systematic, painstaking process he developed early in his career, exploiting what he calls his "obsessive-compulsive" temperament.Lockridge, Larry. "The Changes of Don Eddy," ''Image'', February 2001, p. 29–37. He begins with multiple photographs recording a maximum of detailed visual information.Carr, Gerald. "Don Eddy," ''Arts Magazine'', December 1983. After selecting a "master image," he projects it onto a canvas and maps out his composition. He then lays down three sequences of transparent underpainting in tiny (1/16") layered airbrush circles of different value: the first, in phthalocyanine green, supplies detailed image information and value structure; a burnt sienna layer distinguishes warm from cool regions and amplifies the darks; and a dioxazine purple layer further specifies the warms and cools.Don Eddy website
The Process
Retrieved March 11, 2021. In the final stage, he airbrushes the full range of local colors in the same manner (often 15–25 layers), based on the chromatic structure of the underpainting rather than the actual objects photographed.Museu Europeu d'Art Modern. "Don Eddy and American Hyperrealism," Barcelona: Museu Europeu d'Art Modern, 2014. He has described the result as a kind of illusion—small, abstract circles that resolve into highly representational images at a distance.

Work and reception

Eddy's work has been informed by wide-ranging, sometimes contradictory influences: old masters (e.g.,

van Eyck Van Eyck or Van Eijk () is a Dutch toponymic surname. ''Eijck'', ''Eyck'', ''Eyk'' and ''Eijk'' are all archaic spellings of modern Dutch ("oak") and the surname literally translates as "from/of oak". However, in most cases, the family name refers ...

and

Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

), Impressionist and

Neo-Impressionist Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, '' A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte'', marked the beginn ...

color, the analytical cubism of Braque and Picasso, Hans Hofmann, Conceptual and

Minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post– World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Do ...

critiques of Abstract Expressionism, and Pop art. His art stakes out paradoxical positions to both realism and abstraction, investigated in the context of recognizable, accessible imagery.Criqui, Jean-Pierre
"Locus Focus: 'Hyperrealisms,'"
''Artforum'', January 1976. Retrieved March 4, 2021. It rejects abstract art, yet like that work, emphasizes surface and pictorial issues over imagery according to writer William Dyckes: " ddyis essentially a field painter … concerned with the interactions of shapes and colors rather than with the representation of specific imagery in space."Dyckes, William. "The Photo as Subject," in ''Super Realism: A Critical Anthology'', Gregory Battcock (ed.), New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. p. 155. Likewise, it seems to value photographic verisimilitude, yet in fact, exceeds the camera and human eye by heightening painting attributes such as optical brilliance, tactile highlighting and multiple perspectives.Johnson, Ken
"Realism, Admittedly Slippery, Explores What Can and Can't Be Seen,"
''The New York Times'', December 19, 2003, p. E40. Retrieved March 4, 2021.Patton, Phil
"Super Realism: A Critical Anthology,"
''Artforum'', Summer 2003. Retrieved March 4, 2021.

Early painting cycles (1970–1989)

In the early 1970s, Eddy painted several largely formal cycles involving automobiles.Grellis, Charles. "Art Around the Automobile," ''Road and Track'', 1972. The first captured the reflective possibilities of chrome and high-gloss paint in large, deadpan, highly detailed images of tightly framed bumpers, headlights, grills, wheel hubs and car bodies, which critics suggest transformed ordinary things into animate, uncanny presences and objects of contemplation beyond function (e.g., ''Bumper Section XIII'' or ''Ford—H & W'', both 1970). Mezzatesta, Michael. "Foreword," ''Don Eddy: From Logic to Mystery'', Durham, NC: Duke University Museum of Art, 2000. According to critic Amei Wallach "they juxtapose an exuberant baroque abstraction with a modernist geometry that suggests the hyperpurity of Charles Sheeler and the American precisionists." In the "Private Parking" series (1971), Eddy depicted cars seen through chain-link fences hung with signage, using the crisscrossing patterns and abstract shapes to intensify contradictions between illusionism and the single-plane picture surface.Boice, Bruce
"John Salt,"
''Artforum'', Summer 1973. Retrieved March 4, 2021. In subsequent cycles, Eddy dissolved the corporeality and decipherability of his images by focusing on windows—initially car showrooms (the "Showroom" works, 1971–2), and later, kitchenware and shoe storefronts yielding more chaotic compositions (e.g., ''Pots and Pans'', 1972; ''New Shoes for H.'', 1973).Janson, H.W. ''History of Art'', New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. The window surfaces—both transparent and reflective—enabled him to focus simultaneously on two planes, something impossible in normal vision.Schwendener, Martha

''The New York Times'', February 22, 2013. Retrieved March 4, 2021. The clash of recognizable forms, hard-edged shapes, light and cityscape resulted in what art historian Alvin Martin called "highly veristic adaptations of Cubist theory." Eddy pushed this dissolution to a maximum in late-1970s paintings depicting silverware (and later, crystal) displays on stacked glass and mirrored shelves, which he set up in his studio to explore light refraction.Russell, John

''The New York Times'', November 19, 1976, p. 15. Retrieved March 4, 2021.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', April 1, 1979, Section CN, Page 112. Retrieved March 4, 2021. Critics described that cycle—stripped to an austere palette of icy blues and silvers—as inducing a "perceptual overload"Harrison, Helen A

''The New York Times'', April 28, 1991, Sect. 12LI, p. 11. Retrieved March 4, 2021. where dazzling optical play and complexity reduced space and imagery to nearly unrecognizable abstract patterns (e.g., ''Silverware V for S'', 1977; ''G-I'', 1978).Neff, John Hallmark. "Painting and Perception: Don Eddy," ''Arts'', December 1979. In the 1980s, Eddy decided that this work was too cerebral.Cempellin, Leda. ''Conversations with Don Eddy'', Padova, Italy: Coop. Libraria Editrice Universita di Padova, 2000. He reintroduced color and a Pop dimension—in the form of quickly chosen, inexpensive toys, gumballs, and Disney characters recognized from his youth—in the "Dime Store" cycles.Raynor, Vivien

''The New York Times'', December 5, 1986, p. C33. Retrieved March 4, 2021. These paintings inaugurated dramatic evolutions in style and imagery, including a conceptual shift from perceptual issues to more profound questions regarding thought and the nature of experience. He turned from fully painted still lifes to compositions in which he intuitively selected and painted only what he deemed most compelling, yielding imagery that hovered, apparently weightless, over black voids suggesting memory or dream (e.g., ''C/VI/B (Mickey in a Half Moon Midnight)'', 1982). With the subsequent '"C/VII," "Daydreamer" and "Dreamreader" series, Eddy introduced more jarring juxtapositions of time, place, space and mood, which floated dime-store items over vistas of places he visited (Paris, Italy, Hawaii), interiors, and figures (his daughter, old-master painting personages). These series, which mix man-made and natural, fantasy, reality and mystery, point toward his more spiritual later-career work.

Later painting (1989– )

By the late 1980s, the everyday quality of Eddy's past work was overtaken by imagery that seemingly spanned the universe, from microscopic to cosmic: flora and fauna, landscape, figures, architecture and art history (e.g., ''The Clearing II'', 1990; ''Oracle Bones'', 1996). The new paintings explored the mystery of being through images of flowing water, rainbows, light and immaterial energy alluding to both timelessness and shifting conditions (e.g., ''Seasons of Light'', 1998–9).Genocchio, Benjamin

''The New York Times'', January 30, 2005. Retrieved March 4, 2021. Donald Kuspit characterizes his revival of the spiritual as a "mystical leap of faith" combining aspects of Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism in works that suggest modern-day icons. Eddy employed a new multi-panel strategy to capture this quality: geometric polyptychs, grids (''Catena Aureum'', 1995), and most significantly, medieval altarpiece formats that were vehicles for poetic juxtapositions encouraging contemplation (e.g., ''Imminent Desire and Distant Longing II'', 1993). He sought to overcome what he considered a weakness of single-canvas representational work—a reductive "fixing" of the richness and dynamism of experience. His multi-panel works employ images like textual signifiers; meaning does not reside "in" the image (as with symbols), but rather, is generated between and amongst images in relation (e.g., ''Krishna's Gate'', 1995; ''The Dante Paradox'', 2000). Writers note the work's open-ended, democratic character, in which meaning relies on the specific experiences observers bring into active interaction with each painting. In his exhibition at the Museu Europeu d'Art Modern (Barcelona, 2014), Eddy presented eight largely rectangular triptychs created between 2005 and 2011 that combined natural, architectural, and gradually, urban imagery (e.g., ''Nostos I'', 2005; ''Mono No Aware II'', 2011). In subsequent work, he has continued to explore natural and ephemeral imagery (e.g., the "I Am Water II" works, 2019–20), but has more often focused on urban images of evening skylines, traffic and cafes, elevated trains, bridges and interiors (e.g., ''Sleepless in Paris'', 2017; the "Metal City" works, 2016–20).Don Eddy website
Recent Work
Retrieved March 11, 2021.

Collections

Eddy's work belongs to many museum collections, including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum in New York,The Metropolitan Museum of Art
''Untitled'' 1986-1987, Don Eddy
Collection. Retrieved March 11, 2021.Museum of Modern Art
Don Eddy
Artists. Retrieved March 11, 2021.Whitney Museum of American Art
Don Eddy, ''Strictly Kosher Meats'' 1973
Collection. Retrieved March 11, 2021. the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art,

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

,Cleveland Museum of Art
''New Shoes for H'' 1973-1974, Don Eddy
Collections. Retrieved March 11, 2021. The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, Israel Museum, Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMC, France),

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, ...

,San Antonio Museum of Art
Works of Don Eddy
People. Retrieved March 11, 2021. and Utrecht Museum (The Netherlands).Bonito, Virginia Ann
''Get Real: Contemporary American Realism from the Seavest Collection''
Durham, NC: Duke University Museum of Art, 1998. Retrieved March 8, 2019.

References

External links

Don Eddy official websiteDon Eddy
website
Don Eddy and Leigh Behnke Papers
Smithsonian American Archives of Art.
Don Eddy
Nancy Hoffman Gallery artist page {{DEFAULTSORT:Eddy, Don 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists Photorealist artists Painters from New York City People from Long Beach, California Painters from California University of Hawaiʻi alumni University of California, Santa Barbara alumni 1944 births Living people 20th-century American male artists