「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Realism: From Divine Fiction to Human Reality

Today, we are going to talk about – realism. “I won’t paint angels because I have never seen them.” This statement by Courbet set the core tone for 19th-century realistic art.

During the era when neoclassicism and romanticism dominated the art scene, art always revolved around mythological heroes, religious icons and the ruling class. However, the social upheaval brought about by the Industrial Revolution shifted the main characters of art from the saints on the altar to the gleaners in the soil. Artists began to break free from the idealized and fantastical narratives, and the Realist school of art emerged.

Realism broke the long-standing tradition of idealized creation, turning its attention to the working class. Miller’s “The Gleaners” depicted the ordinary moments of farm work, subverting the grand narrative of traditional historical paintings. Daumier in “Third Class Carriage” captured the modern living conditions of people in industrialized cities, where the crowds were crowded yet isolated from each other. With simple images, they constructed an artistic epic belonging to the common people.

The greatness of realism lies in its ability to, with honest clarity, complete the return of art from divine fiction to mundane reality. Through its solid realistic texture and the direct approach to daily life in its creation, it has laid the visual foundation for modern art to value the true texture, and more importantly, has established the core proposition of modernism: in the ordinary reality situation, to explore the most genuine humanistic power of art.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.