Hongtao Huang

Huang's work is easily among the best representational, illusionistic work you'll ever see. But there are other things I see going on in his work that are also worth drawing attention to. The art of visual illusion achieved a peak just before the development of photography. That innovation took time to develop, but today presents a real challenge to artists with this level of skill. How do we make illusionistic art relevant when photographs can accurately reproduce the visual experience in seconds? Artists have struggled to answer that. And their struggle has recently been made more challenging by computer graphics. Once you could paint or draw what could not be photographed. That loophole has now been closed. Another approach has been to create an illusion that reminds the viewer that this is essentially pigments on paper or other surface. In the portrait displayed, Huang has created the illusion of reality, but let the illusion diminish as the eye moves outward, eventually becoming lines of paper and then the original unmarked paper. So naturally, digital designers came up with programs that let you do these things in minutes instead of hours. They aren't perfected yet, but they'll get there soon if there's a market for this. But there is something that computers can't and will never be able to do. Even when the robot artist is built that can imitate all of the actions of the human artist with photographic ability to create any effect. This is something created through the highly developed skill of a human being, with all our tendencies for error. It isn't as apparent in a reproduced photograph of a human artist's work, but looking at the original, an inescapable part of the experience is that this wasn't the product of a machine, this was the achievement of a fellow human being. This is the magnificence of human potential. No art displays this better than the art of illusion. And though you'll find those that can do as well, you'll be pressed to find any that can do it better than Huang Hongtao. And don't you wish you had something like that on a wall where you could see it every day?

bravo très belle réalisation

Stunning work

tres joli facture

I am sorry, I don't know French, But thank you for your message.

je reste muet d'admiration devant la perfection de cette collection!! toutefois elle manque un brun de personnalité!!juste un soupçon de maladresse!! à bientôt MAÎTRE..