THE ART OF SOLITUDE

How a clutch of artists down the ages has depicted isolation

- ANJULY MATHAI

American artist Richard Estes, 87, considered to be one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the 1960s, painted Madison Square on a “vacant and quiet Sunday morning” in 1994. The place is empty except for a couple of shadowy figures crossing the road; their presence, ironically, amplifies the absence of others. Incidentally, Estes started out in Madison Square as an illustrator of ad campaigns in the 1960s, paid to “realistically misrepresent reality”. In a way, that is what he did later in his career as well, as an artist. He created hyper-realistic cityscapes with photographic precision. Except that his paintings have a depth and detailing that a photograph could never capture.