Arteest

Realism in art refers to the attempt of depicting the subjects according to empirical secular rules. These are considered to be in the objective reality of the third person without interpretation and embellishment.

A belief is thus implied in the approach that the reality is independently ontological according to the conceptual themes of man as well as his beliefs and linguistic practices and can thus be revealed to the artist, who represents this version of reality accordingly. Modern realism, according to Ian Watt begins from the premise that people through their senses can uncover truth and that this has its origins in Lock and Descartes.

Specifically referring to an art movement that has began in the 1850's in France, realists have put themselves in a position against romanticism. Romanticism is a genre which has dominated the literature of France and art in the early nineteenth centuries. Undistorted by biases which are personal, realism believes in the objective reality's ideology and revolts against the emotional exaggerations of romanticists.

Accuracy and truth are the goals that realism in art has. Paintings created in this period depict the working class, since in this century, many open places of work existed due to the commercial and industrial revolutions. Realistic works such as this became very popular and grew simultaneously with the introduction of photography, which was a brand new source of visual pictures that created a great desire to show things as they really were.

Realism in art is a term used referring to art that reveals truth, thus emphasizing sordid, ugly or hard realities of life such as kitchen sink realism, regionalism and social realism. Everyday objects, dilemmas, situations, characters and any 'true to life' situations are rendered in realism. Theatre drama is discarded, as well as the lofty, the unreal or the exaggerated.

Defined as a faithful reality representation, realism is based on the 'objective reality dogma' and is focused on showing middle and lower class society sans the dramatization or the idealizations. While the Industrial Revolution created a reaction of Romanticism, Realism is now the reaction against romanticists. Examples of realist paintings are Gustave Courbet's the 'Stone-Breakers,' created in 1849, Oswald Achenbach's Abendstimmung in der Campagna, painted in 1850 and Ilya Repin's 'They did not Expect Him,' painted in the years 1884-1888.

Main representatives of the school of Realists include Honore Daumier, Gustave Courbet, Gustave Dore, Jean Francois Millet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Pierre-Etienne Theodore and Charles-Francois Daubigny. Other artists known for Realism in art include Edgar Degas, John William Waterhouse, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Ford Madox Brown.

German realists include Georg von Dillis, Friedrich Wasmann, Wilhelm von Kobell, Carl Blechen and Adolf Menzel. American realists include Augustus St Gaudens who was a sculptor, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Francis Coates Jones and Winslow Homer.

Aside from realism in the world of art and sculpture, realism also occurs in the cinema, theatre and literature. Work that resulted from realism paid attention directly to the philosophic and physical dilemmas of modern existence, whether psychological or social.