CAROLYN BRADY: And Female Photorealists Janet Fish and Audrey Flack

Añadido: 2026-06-05

[00:00:01]There were three women within the photo realalist movement that had strong identities. Audrey Flack, who was the first to be purchased by the Museum of Modern Art. Janet Fish, who just brought a mindblowing $660,000 at auction for one of her iconic still life pieces.

[00:00:21]Janet Fish's work is as much about the light as it is about the objects.

[00:00:32]Caroline Brady is a bit more exacting than Janet Fish. The distinction between the two is that Carolyn worked only in watercolor and Janet on canvas. I think that either one of them would be disappointed if you were to look at their work and say, you know, look at how real it looks. Caroline Brady's work is really about moments. Moments that we all know. Moments where we've set a table where we've decided where to put the flowers.

[00:01:05]About enjoying looking at the gleaming silverware or the fluted glasses that are on the table. They're about a beauty to our interior lives about the tables that we have actually sat at and the ones that we set.

[00:01:20]I think that we have to look at these women artists alongside those of the male counterparts from this movement in the 1970s.

[00:01:28]Chuck Close who gave monumentality to portraits. Richard Estes who did the urban environments. Ralph Goings and John Bader who did the diners. You know this was the era of fast food diners and cars with chrome. Television and photography were very important.

[00:01:51]Interesting to note that the women were less drawn to depicting those elements than to doing these still lives. Is it perhaps because they wanted to protect the sanctity of our inner lives. Have to point out that Caroline Brady gives her greatest inspiration to fellow artist Joseph Raphael who was also a great watercolorist. She also traveled abroad and she was able to visit some of the great estates and gardens of Europe.

[00:02:21]So this is Sisinghurst which is in Kent, England. And interesting that she's got no sky in this picture. And it's a garden that's known for its hedges. And for me, this is almost like an interior of a garden scene.

[00:02:40]Giant purple mow. My favorite. I can almost picture Brady leaning in with her camera to capture all the detail in this piece and the incredible appreciation that she probably felt for nature and wanting to transcribe that to the viewer.

[00:02:58]I want to go back again to the fact that she worked exclusively in watercolor, which is a really difficult medium for photo realism. Like everyone else of this movement, she used photographs and a projector to get the foundation before she went to work.

[00:03:15]When you look up close at this one, if she did use a projector to draw first, you really have no evidence or clue of it. There are no literal lines in this piece. There's actually light between each flower and each blade of grass.

[00:03:32]Caroline Brady lived from 1937 to 2005.

[00:03:37]Her list of exhibitions is long and impressive as well as her museum exhibition and inclusion. How do we explain this trending back towards photo realism? Some say it's because of AI and the fact that young and older collectors are drawn and inspired to look back at the artist who did things by hand, things that took time, focus.