Tom Blackwell (1938–2020) is primarily known for his work in Photorealism, a stylistic movement noted for its ardent embrace of photographic source material. In 1969, he began a series of brashly beautiful motorcycle paintings that established him as one of the founders and foremost artists of the movement. The myriad painterly possibilities of urban store windows became another abiding interest. In his store-window paintings, Blackwell captures the counterpoint between the idealized reality within the store display and the bustling urban life reflected in the glass. As author Linda Chase remarks, “The magic of these paintings resides in the artist’s ability to transform the arbitrary photographic information into dynamic and complex artistic compositions, revealing and clarifying the image while preserving its mystery.”
In conjunction with his Photorealist paintings, Blackwell has produced a related body of work that is allegorical in its perspective. Combining photo-derived images, he addresses themes such as the passage of time, the fragility of nature, and the continuity that weaves through human history. The paintings, rich in symbolism and interpretive possibilities, fascinate and impress viewers with the breadth of Blackwell’s abilities. “As a painter, I have been interested in dealing with the formal issues involved in juxtaposed and overlapping images,” he explains. “In my Photorealism work, my goal is to reveal something about the actual world and to explore our photo-mediated perceptions of it.”
Blackwell, born in Chicago in 1938, has deftly captured the vibrancy and visual excitement of urban street life for the past four decades and has had solo exhibitions across the United States and abroad. Tom Blackwell: The Complete Paintings, 1970–2014 is a comprehensive study of the artist’s work as well as his artistic development and process, and includes a compilation of his early paintings through to his most recent works. His paintings are in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Huntington Art Museum, Austin, TX.

Linda Chase is the author of several works on contemporary Realism in addition to monographs on Photorealist painters including Ralph Goings and Richard Estes. She has been the director and curator of national and international Realist exhibitions and has written numerous catalogues for museums and galleries. Carter Ratcliff is a leading art critic, author, poet, and contributing editor of Art in America. His books on art include The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art, as well as works on John Singer Sargent, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol, and many others. Louis K. Meisel is an American author, art dealer, and proponent of the Photorealist art movement. He has written monographs on Richard Estes, Charles Bell, and Mel Ramos. Meisel continues to promote Photorealism and organizes international exhibitions for leading Photorealist artists.

Title Page: 3
Contents: 7
Easy Rider in High Art: 9
The Reflective Surface: On The Art of Tom Blackwell: 11
The Early Years: 15
Post-pop to Photorealism: 25
Painting From The Photograph: 33
The Mannequin Series: 43
The Montage Paintings: 55
Present and Future Tense: 61
My Painting Process: 67
Thoughts on A New York art Career: 73
Plates: 79
List of Works not Illustrated: 207
Acknowledgments: 209
Chronology: 211
Exhibitions: 215
Collections: 223
Bibliography: 225
Photograph Credits: 233
Index: 235
Copyright: 240

Tom Blackwell is a major practitioner of Photorealism, one of the most important developments in the history of American art. Its importance is two-fold. First, Photorealism takes to extremes the use of readymade imagery. That Blackwell and others who work in this style are often the authors of photographs they replicate on canvas—that is, they create their own ready-mades—should not distract us from a crucial point: Photorealism is a literalist transcription of found images, artifacts produced not by the artist’s hand but by the camera. The hand enters as the transcription begins and it is notable that each of the Photorealist painters has a distinctive touch: This distinctiveness points to the second reason for the style’s importance: Photorealism puts individual sensibilities in unmediated contact with photography, which is both a symbol and an agent of the impersonality that we encounter at every turn in contemporary life. Neither denying nor in any way qualifying this impersonality, the Photorealists accept it fully. They then redeem it and infuse it with life as they turn photographs into paintings.