Audrey Flack's 1970s Photorealist Process Revealed in Gary Snyder Exhibition

Gary Snyder Project Space presented "Audrey Flack Paints A Picture," an exhibition curated by Garth Greenan that ran from September 16 to November 6, 2010. The show featured Cibachrome prints alongside five original paintings, illuminating Flack's meticulous creative methods during her highly productive period from the late 1970s through early 1980s. Audrey Flack first gained recognition in the late 1960s as a pioneer of photorealism, incorporating magazine images of celebrities and everyday items like Matza cracker boxes into her work. Her vanitas paintings combined painted black-and-white photographs with elaborate arrangements of objects including fruits, cakes, chocolates, pearls, lipsticks, paint tubes, and wine goblets. Works such as Wheel of Fortune (1977-78) incorporated playing cards, gambling ephemera, a mirror, and a human skull. Flack was among the earliest photorealists to have work acquired by The Museum of Modern Art.