Why realism art

He painted real working people from his region on enormous canvases usually reserved for the lofty figures from classical history, and in doing so, elevated these ordinary people to the same status. The success of Realist art started in France but rapidly spread to the rest of Europe and became highly influential to the art movements that superseded it.

While the movement had clear equivalents in other European countries in terms of both style and ideology, it did not cause the same kind of controversy as it had done in France. Realism had been born out of an inherent social defiance of institutionalized traditions of painting, where support for history and genre painting was implemented by state-sponsored art academies.

In other European cultural hubs this national endorsement of genre painting was far less prevalent, and so embracing this new Realist style was not as radical.

Celebrated artists such as the American James Abbot McNeill Whistler and British painter Ford Maddox Brown painted socially realist canvases that depicted the plight of ordinary people living in the real world. While Millet was walking the fields around Barbizon, one theme returned to his pencil and brush for seven years—gleaning—the centuries-old right of poor women and children to remove the bits of grain left in the fields following the harvest.

He found the theme an eternal one, linked to stories from the Old Testament. In , he submitted the painting The Gleaners to the Salon to an unenthusiastic, even hostile, public.

Gleaners by Jean-Francois Millet, : One of his most controversial, this painting by Millet depicts gleaners collecting grain in the fields near his home.

The depiction of the realities of the lower class was considered shocking to the public at the time. Evaluate the ideas that underpinned the Pre-Raphaelites and how they were manifested in their art.

The Pre-Raphaelites defined themselves as a reform movement, created a distinct name for their form of art, and published a periodical, The Germ, to promote their ideas. Influenced by Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites thought freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Nevertheless, they were particularly fascinated by medieval culture, believing it to possess a spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later eras. The emphasis on medieval culture clashed with principles of realism, which stressed the independent observation of nature.

In its early stages, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood believed its two interests were consistent with one another, but in later years the movement divided and moved in two separate directions. The split was never absolute, since both factions believed that art was essentially spiritual in character, opposing their idealism to the materialist realism associated with Courbet and impressionism. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was greatly influenced by nature and its members used great detail to show the natural world using bright and sharp focus techniques on a white canvas.

In attempts to revive the brilliance of color found in Quattrocento art, Hunt and Millais developed a technique of painting in thin glazes of pigment over a wet white ground in the hope that the colors would retain jewel-like transparency and clarity. Their emphasis on brilliance of color was a reaction to the excessive use of bitumen by earlier British artists. Bitumen produces unstable areas of muddy darkness, an effect the Pre-Raphaelites despised.

No votes yet. Rick Love Director of Education. Comments 2. Image Url URL. Jake Thomas. Dislike 0 0 Like. Blake Morris. Realism is the most boring type of art. Sign up. Forgot Password. This totally made-up account of what occurred amazingly started to be written into art history texts as if it all had actually occurred and to this day the heart of Modernist accounts of the art history between and World War I are based on this book's tale of woe.

The suppressed truth about this period, however, is that during the 19th century there was an explosion of artistic activity unrivaled in all prior history. Thousands of properly trained artists developed a myriad of new techniques and explored countless new subjects, styles and perspectives that had never been done before.

They covered nearly every aspect of human activity. They were the product of the expansion of freedom and democracy and a profound respect for human beings.

They helped disseminate the growing view that every individual was valuable, that all people are born with equal inalienable rights; especially the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The artists and the writers of the 19th century identified, codified, protected and perpetuated the great humanist values and momentous Age of Reason discoveries of the 18th century Enlightenment. But working together, this generation helped free the slaves, protect the environment, stop child labor, eradicate unsafe working conditions, ensured women equal rights and the right to vote, broke up monopolies, and protected and assured minority rights.

And for this, their pay back, at least for the artists, has been to dismiss their work, denigrate their methods, lie about the meaning of their subjects and berate their achievements. Because they didn't lead the way to splattered paint, blank canvases or industrial size Campbell's soup cans?

Therefore they were called "irrelevant"? And here we have a keystone concept of the modernists. These 19th century artists, who we love, are not considered "relevant". And if they are not relevant, certainly modern realists are even less relevant by such standards. Only works and techniques that shed all the former definitions and parameters of fine art were to be considered "relevant".

Only those artists, that lead the way to abstract expressionism were worthy to be called "relevant".

Nothing could have been further from the truth! In light of what I have just explained, the purpose of art is to communicate. It is successful if it explores the most profound aspects of the human experience, and accomplishes it with poetry, beauty and grace.

If it is unskilled, awkward, and self-conscious, it fails and is unsuccessful. But to say that Academicians were irrelevant to their times or to the over-arching path of the fine arts through the ages is utterly wrong and incorrect. They were, in fact, at the pinnacle of hundred years of art development on every level.

The modernists were the impediment to the main path of the fine arts throughout history. Relevance must be understood on many levels and perhaps one of the most essential elements, to understand the art of any era, is to see it in its historical context. Understanding the 19th Century will then show us how it relates to our world today.

In order to understand the relevance of William Bouguereau and other masters of the 19th century it is essential to place them in their own time. And what was happening in history during their time was nothing short of "momentous".

I am speaking about some of the most significant events in all of human history. The academic artists of the 19th century were not only "relevant" to the times, and relevant to the major thread of art history, but they were relevant to the evolution of art itself, as these artists were working at what will certainly be considered the most important crossroads in human history.

Art history has generally been accurate in its description of fine art from the early Renaissance until about For the most part, art historians have given the great and near great their due or at least reasonable notice. That was true until we get to the mid nineteenth century.

From roughly onwards, all of the normal criteria for judging, describing and chronicling the history of art were tossed out the window by 20th century educators.

Almost all the art text books that have been used since the middle of the 20th century have rewritten the history of the 19th century to fit the needs and prejudices of the "modernist" art world which sees all of art history through a "deconstructionist" lens that defines as important, valuable, and relevant only those works which broke one or another of the rules and parameters by which works of art were formerly valued and appreciated. Art history was seen as a long march from the "breakthroughs" of Impressionism, through a stream of different movements which led the way to abstraction, and was espoused with a strident religious fervor by the followers of this "new history" to be the greatest of all forms and styles of art.

Then, with a double-think out of George Orwell's "" they separated the analysis of all previous eras, preth Century , into its own separate history. It is as though there is one written art history with one set of parameters, and then a new art history that built itself on destroying 19 Century's relevance by attacking the very parameters they use to praise all other earlier centuries.

Indeed, they have created a supremely illogical schism. So let us look at what was actually being done by academic artists of the late 19th century. In fact, it is in the realm of human dignity wherein one finds the truly prodigious accomplishments of the writers and the artists of that time. William Bouguereau, who was considered perhaps the greatest living artist in France during his life, is my favorite example, since so many other artists emulated and adored his work and contribution to his field.

He was accused of just working for his bourgeois clients, but in truth he prided himself on being able to paint anything he wanted to and the demand for his work was so great that most works were sold before the paint had finished drying.

He was a workaholic painting 14 to 16 hours a day. He took a direct personal interest in his employees, his students and his colleagues and was widely known to help almost anyone who was in need who touched his life. He was beloved by them all. I have read many letters written to him by these people. We even have some of the original documents in the Bouguereau Archives. One very touching one comes to mind written to him by one of the elder masters of the period, Paul Delaroche.

Born in , he was 28 years his senior, but in our letter he thanks his good friend Bouguereau for having leant him funds, admits to having squandered some earnings with which he might have paid him back sooner and thanked him for permitting him more time to repay him. Bouguereau also played a central role in opening up the Paris Salon and the French Academies to women artists. Starting in he along with Rudolph Julian , Jules Lefebvre , Gabriel Ferrier and Robert Tony Fleury , all amongst France's most successful and famous painters, started holding regular classes and critiques for women.

By all major schools had courses for women, even the much renowned Academie Francais. Bouguereau was born in , after the storm of the American and French Revolutions, two events more than any others which embody the breakthroughs of Enlightenment thinking. Bouguereau and Victor Hugo stood at the top of the list of the leading artists and writers of their day, whose work was to codify those advances, and bridge the gap from centuries of human societies ruled by kings and emperors who dictated by divine right, to a civilization made of men and laws where governments could only gain legitimacy from the consent of the governed: justice, equality under the law, elections by popular vote; protection of human rights; the obligation of government and society to identify, organize, and protect those rights; freedom of the press permitting and insuring popular disclosure, debate and resolution of countless injustices from or embedded in remaining and recalcitrant institutions which were still riddled with the followers of former rules and rulers who fought to hold on to their power.

Let me quote from Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America , written in , where he states:. It was not at all clear where we would wind up, but it was clarity that was needed and was essential if people were to organize their lives securely, for only a free and secure people can build a civilization fit for Culture and the arts.

So it was the writers and artists of the "first" century of liberty and freedom, the 19th Century , that considered it their duty and responsibility to organize, to codify, to popularize and protect the values, laws, and democratized institutions of society which would ensure the perpetuation of liberty; a way of life so recently come to the affairs of man.

How they were to discharge these duties would surely impact and effect future generations perhaps for centuries to come. Jean-Jacques Rousseau cried out at the beginning of his landmark work, The Social Contract : "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. The Western world moved from a world filled with edicts of the "sovereign" to a world ruled by "sovereign states. These revolutionary ideas became concepts whose meanings and understanding were increasingly embedded in the educated classes, spreading rapidly to workers in the fields, and laborers in factories and shipyards, all of whom were to participate in the benefits of a newly free and democratic society as the 18th century origins led to 19th century codification.

It started first narrowly, as with only land owners voting in the original US Constitution, and then ever more broadly until by the time the 20th century had finished dealing with two world wars, the great Depression and countless other horrors, we saw an evolution from an agricultural society to the industrialized and then technologically advanced society of today. So it is these core beliefs and the breakthroughs of the Enlightenment, its ideas and concepts, that are so crucial to understanding the context in which the artists of the 19th century lived.

They were, in fact, addressing the very heart of Enlightenment thought. Bouguereau painted young peasant girls with a solemn dignity and a hushed and reverential beauty. One of his works shows a strong but beautiful peasant girl holding a staff and looking the viewer directly and unabashedly in the eye. She is standing her ground, so to speak.

In another major work a life-size gypsy mother holds her daughter and both are standing on a mountain top looking down at the viewer. Their gaze, too, is direct but welcoming. In this painting Bouguereau is elevating these gypsies by silhouetting them against a vast sky with a low horizon line. We are looking up to them. Their kind and welcoming expressions imply their acceptance of us; the viewer is asked to return this show of respect, which can only be properly echoed by our acceptance of them regardless of the lowly status of their birth.

The very truth and reality of their birth once a negative, now elevates them to the heavens Now, in the 19th Century, all people doing any and all activities, were considered worthy subjects and themes for the artists to address.

Subjects included paintings of the poor and homeless, women thrown out in the cold or children toiling until late at night enduring 16 hour work days. There were scenes of marriage and children and family life; scenes of schools and courts and hospitals and industry, parks and mountains and countless other topics.

For example, a new popular theme was of hypocritical clergy preaching to give up worldly possessions from their opulent apartments filled with art and antiques and personal servants. How revolutionary this was for artists. When Vibert , Brunery or Crogaert satirized the clergy, and painted cardinals in sumptuous surroundings, playing cards with pretty young socialites, or hiring the services of a fortune teller, they were saying that the clergy was human and vulnerable to the same weaknesses and frailty of character as other people.

But beyond that, to spoof the clergy represented our new found freedom of speech.