Style and Civilization: Realism

Beschrijving boek

By Linda Nochlin. With illustrations.

‘I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or a future century’, wrote Gustave Courbet, a leading exponent of Realism. The demand that an artist ‘be of his time’ and portray contemporary life with sincerity and veracity were the central tenets of the Realist movement, which emerged during the social and political upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century. Rejecting all idealization in art and literature, the Realists turned for inspiration to the socially dispossessed, to the worker, the peasant and the laundress, as well as to the more prosperous sectors of everyday life.

Yet, as Linda Nochlin’s accomplished study shows, Realism was ‘no more a mere mirror of reality than any other style’. Setting the movement in its social and historical context, she discusses the crucial paradox posed by Realist works of art - notably in the revolutionary paintings of Courbet, the works of Manet, Degas and Monet, of the Pre-Raphaelites and other English, American, German and Italian realists.