Realism Style

Paper Summary:

This paper explains the origins of Realism, its style, its political philosophy, and the subject of Realist art. The paper also discusses three paintings by important Realist artists, Courbet, Jean-Francois Millet and Honore Daumier, in order to illuminate the techniques, political ideas, and style of Realism. Finally, the paper explores the biographies of these three artists to provide a better understanding of why they were attracted to Realism.

Gustave Courbet
Jean-Francois Millet
Honore Daumier
Biographies
Realist and Revolutionary
Avant-garde More Recently

From the Paper:

"The Realist style owes its existence to the Realist concept. "Realism is democracy in art", Courbet believed. (Nochlin, xiii) Taking that as the credo upon which the works of the artists were constructed, the style itself can be nothing if not anti-academic, anti-historical, anti-conservative. Indeed, whether brushstrokes or pen markings or etching into stone or metal form the image, the underlying attitude is one of freedom, attention to the gross characteristics of form, dismissal of mere decoration for its own sake, and obvious celebration of anything. The self-consciousness of the finely chosen brushstroke or marking is gone, in favor of a brushstroke or marking that favors expression of the interplay between what is seen and the seer. Gone is any demand from outside the artist to make things appear lovelier, grander, more stately than they perhaps really are. It is, in short, art with the warts painted in. It is the "attempt to render in paint that exists in three dimensions". (Parlez-vous Web site) It is, moreover, a less light-filled art than what had gone before, the Romantic style, and what would come after, Impressionism. It used the colors of the palette that corresponded to the nature of the subject matter, and the subject matter had changed from nobility in shining satins to the peasantry in rough and dirty woolens and linens. It might be fair to say that Realism was a portrait of reality gone down market one full step, for the painters themselves were, by and large, firmly bourgeoisie. So it might also be reasonably concluded that Realism is a style depicting "what is" from a viewpoint that could easily look down were it not rooted in an egalitarian philosophy and a compassionate attitude."

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