Interpreting reality -

Eleyna Rider, Collection Digitisation Intern at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery

The representation of reality is a relevant issue in this post-covid age where we are bombarded with deep fakes and highly curated versions of reality.

When I feel overwhelmed, I find something refreshing, grounding, sobering, painful and raw about reflecting on the mundane. The people on the street or on the bus, close friends, family, home.

Below I’ve included artists who were actively involved in or influenced by Realism – a movement that champions the everyday and commonplace. Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, and Honoré Daumier and writers such as George Elliot, Honoré de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert were champions of this movement around the mid until the late nineteenth century. Whilst artists were not trying to depict reality, they draw attention to the concrete aspects of reality and subject matter using their individuality in the process. Turning away from romanticism and sentimentality, realist artists treasured frankness and naturalistic settings - domestic environments, crowded streets and horticultural fields.

Whilst Realism is a term that is contested, a common consensus is try as they might to produce a reproduction of reality, artist’s work “will never become a reproduction or an imitation, but will always be an interpretation” (Jones, 2021).

References

Jones, Charlotte. 2021. “This spasm upon canvas”: George Eliot, Gustave Courbet and Realist Aesthetics. Journal of Victorian Culture, 26(2), 244–266. https://doi.org/10.1093/jvcult/vcab001