Realism

Realism in the visual arts is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation. The term is also used to describe works of art which, in revealing a truth, may emphasize the ugly or sordid.

Realism also refers to a mid-19th century cultural movement with its roots in France, where it was a very popular art form around the mid to late 1800s. It came about with the introduction of photography - a new visual source that created a desire for people to produce things that look “objectively real”. Realism was heavily against romanticism, a genre dominating French literature and artwork in the mid 19th century. Undistorted by personal bias, Realism believed in the ideology of objective reality and revolted against exaggerated emotionalism. Truth and accuracy became the goals of many Realists.

19th Century Realism

Realism was a response to both Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and for the entire group, history had no artistic relevance or importance. Gustave Courbet, the leader of the realism movement, defined Realism as a "human conclusion which awakened the very forces of man against paganism, Greco-Roman art, the Renaissance, Catholocism, adn the gods and demigods, in short against the convention ideal." The Realists, who were influenced by the Dutch and Flemish naturalists of the seventeenth century, were dedicated wholeheartedly to an establishment founded on justice for the working class, the ordinary. In fact, all the artists, politicians, economists, and critics congregated in the Andler Keller, a Parisian brasserie (a type of restaurant serving food at all hours), which eventually became known as the temple of Realism. In 1863, after being shunned by Count Nieuwerkerke at the Universal Exposition of 1855, Courbet and friends organized a Salon de Refusés in 1863. This was an exhibition included the works of those who are now recognized as the premier painters of the period. Astoundingly, two of the greatest Realist masters, Daumier and Courbet, were actually forced to serve prison sentences as a result of their involvement in the rebellion against uniformity.

Photography

With the arrival of photography, the world of visual arts would be alterred significantly. The idea of photography itself was not new, and some artists have even employed some form of it. The concept of photography revolved around light passing through a small aperture as it registers an image of objects upon any surface which it may strike. The camera obscura was used by artists throughout the ages and specialized particularly by Vermeer. Daguerreotypes soon became popular by the hundres of thousands. The first photo portrait was made by Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. The possibilities were enormous, but for many artists, a point of concern. With the invention of photography, the art of portraiture would become almost non-existent. Ultimately, photography, by 1858, was an assured fact, and photgraphers were able to prove at last how living beings really look in motion, to the great discomfiture of artists in the classic tradition with their contrived poses. In other words, photographs capture the essence of the action, the movement as it is, and there is absolutely no doubt in the veracity or accuracy of the photograph. This fits in perfectly with the realists because their sole focus is to portray the world, as it is, and not in a blown-up, romantic manner.

Painting in France

Corot

Conceived in total isolation form the earliest photographic experiments, yet mysteriously parallel to them, the new objective style becomes apparent first int he quiet early landscapes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Corot's taste and desire appealed not to the classical conventions but to the harmony of man and nature in the Italian landscape and the beauty of Italian light, which erases differences of tiem and unifies all objects, natural or man-made, in the serenity of vision. Corot's primary concern is not as much for the figures in the painting as it is for the landscape. What must be noted is that although Corot is a realist, his work has very little in common with the somber tones of other Realist landscape painters. Corot's soft silvery light was far away from reality, yet his landscapes were surely influenced by the reality of the photography in the nearly monochromatic and soft-focus landscapes of his later years.

Millet

Another painter who settled int he forest of Fontainebleau and was not likely to be found among the Realists of the Andler Keller, was Jean François Millet. Millet preferred to live like a peasant and dedicated his life to the painting of peasants in whose attachment to the soil he found a religious quality. Up to this point in art history, peasants had often been portrayed as moronic or senseless; however, Millet saw them as pious actors in a divinely ordained drama. His figures stride in almost angelic forms with a Michelangelesque grandeur.

Daumier

Honoré Daumier was the realist most absorbed with the earth and ground. He worked in the lithograph technique, which involved drawing on porous stone with a pencil. The realist affiliation with peasantry and the working class is in full bloom in Daumier's work. One of his most powerful lithographs, Rue Transonian, April 15, 1834, depicts an incident during the insurrection of that month in which all the inhabitants of a working-class house were slaughtered in reprisal for shots fired at a single soldier. Although Daumier was imprisoned as a result of these challenging creations, he continued to portray the working class as a hero who gathered old and young about him in a march through the grim streets of poverty. Instead of littering the canvas of his painting with hundreds of individuals and utter chaos, Daumier intelligently sketches in only a few heads, and hints at hundreds of windows with a few dark brushstrokes. This deliberate style creates extreme tension and an impending exposure of the herd of people creeping in the dark, closer and closer to the light.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

West, Shearer (1996). The Bullfinch Guide to Art. UK: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. ISBN 0-8212-2137-X. 

External link

• Article on American literary realism at the Literary Movements site

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