“The division between realism and abstraction is not as clear as we might first believe. ” Within The Practices of Looking, Sturken and Cartwright examine the relationship between perspective and realism. In addition to explaining how perspective is important in replicating reality within art and video games. The example given to illustrate this perspective in Practices of Looking is a painting from Mark Tansey, called The Innocent Eye Test. The painting is a critique of the form of realism and depicts a cow stood in front of men in lab coats, staring at an artists realist painting of a cow. Tansey does this to show that the narratives never actually occurred. Realism within art ultimately provides a difficult question to the audience, what
The shift from Realism to Impressionism in the 19th century represented not only a change in form, but it also represented a shift in ideology. As one of our module videos notes, rather than focusing on accuracy and clarity, Impressionism emphasized “what the mind and the eye sees” and the “impression of light and color.” We will briefly discuss how the differences in the approaches of the Realists and the Impressionists had interesting implications for arts and how these ideologies can be applied to the ways in which believers and unbelievers interpret art.
In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.
Realism is both reliant on and thoroughly undermined by the uncanny. Realism was prominent during the 19th and 20th centuries. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms realism is a ‘general attitude’ of literature that ‘rejects idealization, escapism and other extravagant qualities of romance.’ It must be noted that realism is not simply a realistic “slice of life” but a ‘system of conventions producing a lifelike illusion.’ The uncanny is a ‘kind of disturbing strangeness evoked’ in literature. Freud’s 1919 essay The Uncanny, or Das Unheimlich, discusses the subject in detail, stating that the uncanny is a subject which ‘arouses
I have found the realism arts to be very fascinating. The three pieces of art that I will be discussing are Francisco Goya's The Third of May, 1808 oil on canvas 8ft 9 in. x 13ft 4in, Eugene Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People, 1830 oil on canvas 8 ft 6 3/8 in. x 10ft. 8 in. and Honore Daumier, Fight between Schools, Idealism and Realism, 1855 Caricature
Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant 's Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing ' in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy
What makes realistic art, be it any form of art e.g. literature, paintings, sculptures? Art as a whole is based on relation to an individual or to a society. In the focus of visions of realism a common theme in short stories relating to realism is that the idea of something being ‘real’ might not actually be real. The point of this idea is to convey that individual thought is created from one's own environment and community. This idea is seen in several short stories such as The. The idea that humans are assimilated into groups or communities from which they originate is evident in the short stories “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato and “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Realism is the artistic attempt to recreate life as it is in the context of an artistic medium. It began as a revolt against the conventions of the classic view of art in the late 1800s in America and Europe in the form of an artistic movement (McConnel, R. 1997). There are many themes involved with realism that shall be discussed. These include accuracy and independence.
Realism was a huge movement in late 1800s to early 1900s. All art forms were influenced by it. Writers, artists, actors and more started taking a more simple direction and tried to depict life as it actually was. In visual art it was common to see ordinary people doing every day
In a visually-oriented world, Images are the fount of representation. While already dominant in the past, image culture has become even more alluring, compelling the attentions of even the blind. In Practices of Looking by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, the first chapter, Images, Power, and Politics defines representation and addresses how images function as investments of power in modern day image culture. The authors examine the value of images by connecting representation to power dynamics within ideological and social contexts. While their ideas are concrete and supported thoroughly, their perspective is that of previous generations and as such, do not fully reflect reality of today.
The use of geometric shapes in this painting allows the subject to be viewed in both a recognizable and unrecognizable state at the same time. Overall, geometric shapes and patterns play an essential role in what the viewer sees, which is further supported by a powerful color palate.
Susan Sontag discusses the difference in viewing art in physical form versus viewing in through a lens. Throughout the essay “In Plato’s Cave”, Sontag thinks both Plato’s cave images and photographs represents, “the mere image of truth” (Sontag 3). With that, Sontag repeatedly uses the terms “truth” and “reality”, but does not define what these terms mean to her. The impression Sontag left for these terms is that “truth” or “reality” stand for nothing more than what we can see. Being said, the difference between what we can with our own eyes and what we can see with a camera is reduced to the physical/mechanical differences between the human eye and body camera/lens.
of experience" (194) This argument relies on the precept that art is reality is not nature or a reflection of nature
“Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down. “- Francis Bacon. However when I learnt more about history of art and the way each movement and happenings in the world inspired artist to make new works, I was able to see much more than just a canvas with random paints and sketches. The interesting part about this concept is that each piece of art could be interpreted in many different ways. In contemporary art there isn’t right and wrong, each of us view and find different meanings and connections with artworks.
Arthur C. Danto in “The Artworld” provides us with the argument that, “To see something as art requires something that the eye cannot descry-an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.” Danto shows us the importance of the artworld in order to know that a work of art is more than just what we can plainly see. Danto provides two theories he calls the “IT” (Imitation theory) and the “RT” (Reality theory). With these two theories, Danto explains how we can define art and why “The Artworld” is needed to help understand art, because after all, “these days one might not be aware he was on artistic terrain without an artistic theory to tell him so.”
In a ‘tradition breaking spirit’ [D’Alleva, 2012], that characterised modernist artists, early in the twentieth century, Duchamp abandoned traditional ideas and techniques, to create a new kind of ‘art’, one that the idea behind a work of art is more important that its visual realization, the ‘retinal’. The ready-mades was the product of Duchamp’s questioning what art is.