Why realism deserves more attention than popular nowadays abstractionism?

August 03, 2017   abstractionism , art , paintings , realism

Painting is a type of art which not everyone can understand. So far, painting is the only type of classical art that I am interested in. I don't have any education in this field, so everything that you will read in this article is solely my opinion. I will try to explain my point of view as clear as possible and use as many examples of paintings as possible, hoping that it will make you interested in this fascinating world of art.

In my opinion, paintings are created to perform the following functions: cognitive, aesthetic, religious, ideological, philosophical, socio-educational or documentary. Using easier words, paintings are created for the following purposes:

• To share knowledge, ideas, thoughts or even emotions: historical events, traditions, scientific discoveries, people's lives, views, values, etc.
• To show the beauty of the world: flowers, people, animals, science, nature in general, etc.
• To illustrate religious events or ideas.
• To explain views which express interests of various social classes and groups.
• To illustrate some philosophical views and ideas.
• To perpetuate the most important documents for future generations.

Of course, all these purposes intersect each other and every painting can have multiple purposes, so most of the time it is quite difficult to highlight the main idea of a painting, or if it even exists.

There are great amounts of styles of painting (which can be combined with one another and, as a consequence, additional merged styles are produced), but here are a few most popular ones:

• Photorealism. Photorealism is a style which often seems more real than reality. The finest details are drawn because nothing is insignificant or unimportant to be included in the painting. Photorealistic paintings look more like a sharply focused photograph, rather than anything else.
• Realism. This art style is one that most people treat as "real art". From a little distance the painting looks real, but if you get closer, you will realize that it is an illusion, created with a skillful use of paint.
• Painterly. This is a style or technique that can be either realistic or abstract and is characterized by an evident brush work and texture in the paint.
• Impressionism. This is a style of painting which emphasizes an artist's immediate impression of a moment or scene, which makes it look more like a draft or unfinished painting.
• Expressionism / Fauvism. Unrealistic colors and painting without using perspective techniques are the unique elements of the style. Artists choose colors to show emotions or to make an emotional impact, rather than create a realistic looking painting.
• Abstraction. Abstraction is about painting the essence of a subject or your interpretation of the subject rather than the visible realistic details, while still retaining an echo of whatever it is that prompted the initial idea.
• Abstract. Pure abstract art doesn't try to look like anything from the "real world," it is an art style that is intentionally non-representational. The subject or point of the painting is the colors used, the textures in the artwork, the materials used to create it.

Now, when you have basic knowledge about painting styles, I must clarify a little the topic of the article. In the title, I used words "realism" and "abstractionism", which is not correct, because by "realism" I meant a combination of the following styles: photorealism, realism, painterly, impressionism, and the rest of listed styles were supposed to be combined into "abstractionism".

Abstractionism

Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.

Wassily Kandinsky

Convergence, by Jackson Pollock

Untitled VIII, by Willem de Kooning

This is exactly a kind of statement with which I can't agree. As for me, you don't need to draw well in order to be able to create an abstract painting. The paintings above look like they were "drawn" by little children messing up with paint. But both of these painting cost dozens of millions of dollars, whereas beautiful works of, for example, Richard Macneil and Ester Roi (listed below), have no value at all comparing to these paintings.

My biggest concern about the abstract art is that it's quite difficult to give an estimate to a painting if it doesn't have any image, logic, or explanation behind this painting. Hence, in my opinion, if you can explain why each line, object, and pattern look the way they look, then I consider it as a real art. For me, it means that a painting has a concrete structure. Otherwise, the whole painting appeared by a coincidence and not by a thorough planning.

It doesn't mean that a painting can't have any random objects, lines, or dots. The most important thing is that the artist must know what all these objects mean and why s/he represented it this way.

Abstract Emotions, by Steve K	Mixed Emotions, by Modern Art Prints
Abstract Art	Abstraction 1, by Andrade Anghel

I totally agree that abstract is a very powerful style, very impressive one. Moreover, sometimes abstract is the only style which can express emotions and ideas that an artist tries to express in a painting. The two top paintings which illustrate emotions are perfect examples of abstract art with meanings. Each masterpiece looks like a thorougly planned painting. Ripples and overlapping of those ripples can be a representation of a thinking process from the artist's point of view. At the same time, the diffusion of gases can be a representation of "Mixed emotions". Everyone can understand these paintings in different ways, but what makes it "real art", in my opinion, is that artists can explain their paintings and why they decided to create them in such ways.

Emotional paintings

Study for «The Eiffel Tower and the cyclist»	Times Square Lights, by Jeremy Mann
Paris Flower Shop, by Richard Macneil	Vous voyez au Café de Flore, by Gajoum Kal

Paintings can show deepest emotions and colors of life: romance, mystery, and energy. They can open something very common in a totally new way. And to do so, skilled artists don’t need to use unrealistic colors or distortion of perspective. Here are works of five very talented artists who managed to illustrate the beauty of life, share emotions, and even tell a story. The listed paintings are created using the following styles: realism, painterly, and impressionism. Maybe in some works (works of Jeremy Mann and Kal Gajoum) nuances are missing, but overall view is very clear, understandable, and conveys emotions and beauty.

Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński

Untitled, by Zdzisław Beksiński

Another artist who tries to express his emotions through paintings is Zdzisław Beksiński, who went through the World War 2 when he was a child. All this horror and fear which he saw when he was a kid, he tries to convey with his paintings. His style of works is very unusual, which makes his paintings look impressive and frightening at the same time.

Beauty of the world

Beneath the Blue, by Ester Roi	Preludio, by Ester Roi
Six Roses, by Ester Roi	Awakening, by Ester Roi

Photorealism, realism, and impressionism are very good at illustrating the true beauty of nature. A perfect example of an artist who uses the photorealistic style in her paintings is Ester Roi. Over the past few years, Ester has been observing how water changes the appearance of objects: hard lines become flexible, warm colors become cool, realism turns into abstraction and ordinary becomes unusual. To convey this effect, she combines drawing and painting in her works, using multi-colored wax crayons and a special board that melts paraffin when heated. This unusual technique allowed her to achieve incredible realism in her paintings.

Without a doubt, the paintings which are listed above are fascinating and in a way look more realistic than the real life. But still, there are a lot of other even more beautiful paintings. One of my favorite paintings is The ninth wave, by Ivan Aivazovsky.

The Ninth Wave, by Ivan Aivazovsky

It depicts a sea after a night storm and people facing death attempting to save themselves by clinging to debris from a wrecked ship. The painting has warm tones, which reduce the sea's apparent menacing overtones and a chance for the people to survive seems plausible. This painting shows the destructive side, and beauty of nature.

The purpose of realistic styles is, in my opinion, to show true colors and emotions of a particularly chosen frozen moment in time. Depending on an artist, s/he can illustrate the tiniest details of every object in the painting (as Ester Roi does in her works), not to concentrate on unnecessary details and give just the most important information (the same as what we see with our eyes), or it's also possible for an artist just to set up an environment or a shape without adding a lot of information except colors which play the most important role in this kind of paintings giving the viewer the emotional background of an event, situation, or object (what impressionists do in their works in general, and Gajoum Kal illustrates in his paintings in particular).

As you can see, there are a lot of really beautiful paintings that show the magic and power of nature. Some of those paintings can even tell a story behind some event that happened or only would happen. So, realistic styles can be used in various types of paintings, including historical and religious works.

Historical paintings

The first and main purpose of realism was to illustrate some historical or simply important event. Artists created this kind of paintings not only to decorate kings' chambers but also to save knowledge and even send a message for future generations. There are unlimited topics of historical paintings: wars, revolutions, coronations, celebrations, everyday life, royal balls, etc.

A Scene from ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ VI, by William Hogarth	The Charge of the Mamelukes, by Francisco de Goya
Copy of the Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David	Morning of Execution of Streltsy, by Vasily Surikov

Historical paintings belong to only one of many types of paintings which are used to convey information and knowledge. Great examples of other types are symbolic and religious arts which concentrate mostly on spiritual knowledge rather than plain facts.

Paintings with a deep meaning

Some people can say that abstract styles are best for deep thinking and philosophy. I will partly agree with this statement because a lot of thoughts can't be expressed with any known shapes or colors. In this case, abstract style combined with a clear explanation of every piece of painting can represent those things that previously was impossible to represent in a painting.

Nevertheless, a great bunch of ideas and thoughts can be represented using realistic styles as well. Here are a few paintings the only purpose of which is to send some message to the viewer.

After the rain, by Cyril Rolando	Farm, by Pawel Kuczynski
PawelKuczynski43, by Pawel Kuczynski	Ladder, by Gürbüz Ekşioğlu

As you can see, skilled artists are able to create paintings with very deep ideas, without using abstraction at all. There are much more beautiful works of art as well as artists who create something more than just simple paintings. All works illustrated above are created by not that much-known artists, but there are a few very famous ones who created their works in order to perpetuate their philosophical ideas in their pictures.

One perfect example of such an artist is Salvador Dalí with his fascinating masterpiece The Persistence of Memory. This picture is a kind of symbol of the transience and relativity of the time space.

"The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.

The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali

Conclusion

So, as you can see, realistic styles allow you to express a lot of ideas and thoughts, and to create paintings with a lot of different purposes. Of course, abstract art is very important, it will never go away, but it is very important to understand that even though abstract styles are very powerful and in some sense attractive, they are not for everything. There are much more topics which require realistic styles, rather than abstract. Probably, if you want to talk about the highest philosophical ideas, then of course there is no chance that you can elude abstract techniques, but for vast majority of other topics abstraction will not make your painting look better or more professional, it will just show that you can't use techniques and methods that are better suited for these particular purposes. 

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 

CC BY-NC-ND