Realism
Realism definitions “A term first used in France in the 1850s to characterize works concerned with representing the world as it is rather than as it ought to be.” [source: Cambridge Guide to Literature in English] “Realism was first used as a literary term in France, where it was applied to literary and visual forms which aim for the accurate reproduction of the world as it is.” [source: Bloomsbury Dictionary of the English Language]
the world as it is tries to “document” contemporary life use of “every day” scenes tends to create objective depictions often involves characters from the lower classes historically, the poor had not been the subject of novels Writers (e.g., Balzac and Flaubert) were accused of immorality. Their defense was often that they were “realists”. [sources: Cambridge Guide & Bloomsbury Dictionary]
Realist Writers Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Madame Bovary (1856) Sentimental Education (1869) Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) War and Peace (1869) Anna Karenina (1873-1877) Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Crime and Punishment (1866)
In Art + Gustave Courbet was the first artist to proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic. [source: Britannica Concise Ency.] Burial at Ornans (1849-1850)
GUSTAVE COURBET, The Stone Breakers, 1849. Oil on canvas, 5’ 3” x 8’ 6”. Formerly at Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed in 1945).
Realists provide “the viewers with a reevaluation of ‘reality’.” Gustave Courbet and Realism [source: Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, p. 733] Realists provide “the viewers with a reevaluation of ‘reality’.” Only things of one’s own time are “real”. Focus on, and depiction of, experiences of everyday, contemporary life disapproved of traditional fictional subjects they are not “real”, not of the present word Courbert: “show me an angel, and I’ll paint one.”
Academic vs. Realist art nudity of mythological characters was acceptable, the nudity of a “shameless” woman was not William Bouguereau’s Nymphs and Satyr in Academic Style Manet’s Olympia
Sometimes there is a message Sometimes there is a message. It may be political or critical of society. HONORÉ DAUMIER, The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862. “… provides a glimpse into the cramped and grimy railway carriage of the 1860s. The riders are poor and can afford only third-class tickets. … [they] were crammed together on hard benches that filled the carriage.” [source: Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, p. 737]