Buying Paintings Realism

In literature as well as art realism is the depiction of subjects as they appear in practical, everyday life. Realism does not deal with interpretation or embellishment. The point of realism is to capture people or situations in a gritty and real way. Similar to realist photography, the realist painter does not place emphasis on stylization but is most interested in depicting situations just as they appear to the naked eye.

While realism depicts real characters in real situations, there tends to be emphasis placed on the sordid or ugly. In this way, realism is very much the opposite of idealism. In idealism the theory is that the reality and regular world around us is merely a reflection of a higher truth. With realism, however, it’s as though we’re saying “all I know for sure is what my eyes and other sense organs tell me”.

As a reaction to the idealism of Romanticism in France during the middle of the nineteenth century, realism became the popular cultural movement in many ways. Realism is often linked to demands for political and social reform, as well as ideas about democracy. Dominating the literature and visual arts of England, France and the United States between the years 1840 and 1880, realism was popular throughout many facets of life.

Realists tend to throw out such hubris as classical forms, theatrics and lofty esoteric subjects in favor of the most commonplace subjects and themes. A very famous example of a realist painting is Jean-Francois Millet’s ‘The Gleaners’ from the year 1857. This painting portrays three women working in the fields. The colors are very realistic, almost drab, by contrast to non-realist paintings.

Realism as an art movement appears as early as 2400 BC in India in the city of Lothal. Examples of this type of art can be found around the world and throughout art history. In a very broad sense, realism is art that shows any subject or object that has been observed and accurately depicted, though the entire art piece may not conform to realism conditions.

During the late sixteenth century the most prominent mode of art in European art was a form called mannerism, which showed artificial and elongated figures in very unreal, though graceful positions. Then an artist by the name of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio emerged and changed much of the direction of art simply by depicting real humans doing real things. His work shows images painted directly fro meveryday life and shows an immediacy that had never been seen before.

Dutch art had any realism entries, with their fondness for homely details and humble situations and subjects. Rembrandt is a very well known example of Dutch realism in paintings. The Barbizon School took realism in a whole new direction when, by observing and painting nature, the beginnings of Impressionism took shape.

Realism still plays a role in paintings and art of all kinds today. From film to television and the fine arts, realism is still a major player in the world of creative and expressive processes and productions. Throughout human history there have been those that wish to see things as they are and those that see in reality a hint of the divine. Realism went a long way in providing the one extreme with which we’ve discovered several in betweens in more modern and contemporary art.

Buying Paintings Precisionism

 

 

Also known as Cubist Realism, and related to the Art Deco movement, Precisionism was developed in the United States after World War I.  The term for this movement was coined in the 1920s, and influenced by the Cubist and Futurist movements; the main themes for these paintings were mainly regarding industrialization and modernization of the American landscape.  These elements were depicted with the use of precise and sharply defined geometrical shapes, a reverence for the industrial age, but with social commentary not a directly fundamental part. 

The degrees of abstraction ran the spectrum as some works had photo realistic qualities, and though the movement had no presence outside of the United States, the artists that made up this particular grouping were a closely knit collective remaining active through to the 1930s.  Georgia O’Keefe remained as one of the leading proponents of this style, and stayed so for many years afterwards until the 1960s, her husband was a highly regarded mentor for the group.  In a post post-Expressionist phase of life in the art world, Precision ism has affected and influenced the movements of magic realism which utilizes aspects such as juxtaposing of forward movement with a sense of distance, and pop art in which themes from mass culture were used to define art much there forward.

Just after the 1950s began, the movement of pop art was clear in places such as Britain and the United States, and employed elements of advertising and comic books to create a foundation that might have been taken as a reaction to the then popular movement of abstract expressionism.  Though the term wasn’t coined until 1958, it was later linked with Dadaism from the beginning of the century, and at one point was called Neo-Dada because of the strong influence from artist Marcel Duchamp.  Later affecting artists like Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, bringing the definition to come to mean one of low-cost mass-produced and gimmicky artwork, and stressing everyday values with common sources like product packaging and celebrity photographs.

By exploring that fraction of everyday imagery, the artists found themselves working with contemporary consumer culture, and this became apparent in parts of Britain, Spain, and Japan around the same point in time.  In Britain in particular, where pop art seemed to stem from at that point in 1947, and many works began blurring the boundaries between art and advertising.  Whereas in Spain, the movement became interrelated with the “new figurative”, the work arose from the roots of informalism which began to be a critical aspect in this part of the world.

In Japan, pop art has been seen and utilized throughout much of the country’s native artwork through such means as Anime and the “super flat” styles of art, and became the means through which the artists could further critique their own culture through a more satirical lens.  When choosing a stimulating piece by these artists, it may be a more invigorating exercise to find some of those other artists to whom these later artists owe much of their inspiration towards their own work, and Precision ism is just as appropriate a place to start for you as anywhere else in the artistic spectrum.

Today, Precision ism can be seen as fundamental influence in commercial and popular art, but cannot be too overlooked as being one of a few different movements to affect our present day stance on art’s utility and functions.  With the postmodern present coming to light, maybe we shall once again be drawn back to the past that we have come to take for granted too often, and reveal a new age to define a new century of experience.