Contemporary Realism in Painting

1. Contemporary Realism in Painting Prof: A. Elhaloui

2. Objective • To explain how contemporary culture brought back a certain version of realism in Painting, we will use Francis Schaeffer’s idea of ”line of desperation”. Francis Schaeffer

3. Francis Schaeffer Line of Hope: Truth = our representation of it Art Line of Desperation The Pit of Desperation: what we represent is not the Truth (maybe because there is no Truth)

4. Truth Representaion Divorce

5. What we want to show • We shall see this divorce in two steps: Impressionism and then abstract art. • Contemporary art will try to restore a version realism of above the ”line-of-desperation” : Contemporary realism.

6. Although Arthas always been an essential building block in all human cultures, the word “art” has not always meant what we understand from it in the contemporary culture. • In the Ancient World and Middle Ages the word we would translate as “art” today was applied to any activity governed by rules and having a certain utility. Painting and sculpture were included among a number of human activities, such as shoemaking and weaving, which we would today call crafts.

7. The idea of an artifact being a Work of Art emerged, together with the concept of the Artist, in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy. During the Renaissance, the word “art” emerged as a collective term encompassing painting, sculpture, and architecture.

8. Chinese art What’s the center of this painting work?

9. Chinese art What can you see when you get very close to this painting?

10. Chinese art

11. Classical art Davinci’ Mona Liza

13. Classical art Davinci’s the Virgin of the Rock

14. What’s Impressionism • Impressionism was a 19th century art movement, that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who began publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from Claude Monet'sImpression, Sunrise (1872/3)

15. Characteristic of impressionist painting • Visible brushstrokes, • Light colors, • Open composition, • Emphasis on light in its changing qualities • Ordinary subject matter, • And unusual visual angles.

16. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky argued that modern science dealt with dynamic forces, revealing that matter was ultimately spiritual in character: art should display the spiritual forces behind the visual world. What’s Abstract Art • Abstract art is a more enthusiastic movement towards the divorce from belief in Truth. • Abstract art is now generally understood to mean art that does not depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses shapes and colors in a non-representational or subjective way. • Works of abstractists such as those of Wassily Kandinsky, are generally seen as the first fully abstract paintings in 1911.

17. On white

18. In his own words

19. Artists such as Wassily Kandinsky argued that modern science dealt with dynamic forces, revealing that matter was ultimately spiritual in character: art should display the spiritual forces behind the visual world. • Works of abstractists such as those of Wassily Kandinsky, are generally seen as the first fully abstract paintings in 1911.

20. What is Contemporary Realism? • Contemporary Realism is the straightforward realistic approach to representation which continues to be widely practiced in this post-abstract era. It is different from Photorealism, which is somewhat exaggerated and ironic and conceptual in its nature.

21. Contemporary Realists form a disparate group, but what they share is that they are literate in the concepts of Modern Art but choose to work in a more traditional form. Many Contemporary Realists actually began as abstract painters, having come through an educational system dominated by an professors and theorists dismissive of representational painting.

22. Contemporary realists • Among the best-known artists associated with this movement areWilliam Bailey, Neil Welliverand Philip Pearlstein.

23. William Bailey • Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, William Bailey became a painter in styles ranging from abstraction to super-real. • From 1962 to 1969, he taught at Indiana University, and from 1969, was a professor of art at Yale University. • He lives and works in Branford, CT and is a member of the National Academy of Design, elected an Associate in 1983.

24. 1971 Still Life with Eggs, Bowl and Vase

25. Bailey’s Philosophy of Painting "I admire painters who can work directly from nature, but for me that seems to lead to anecdotal painting.  Realism is aboutinterpreting daily life in the world around us.  I'm trying to paint a world thats not around us."

26. Question In which sense is Bailey’s world ”a world that is not around us?”

27. Bailey’s objects • Bailey’s objects are distinct domestic objects arranged frontally on top of a table that coincides with the line of the horizon. • They stand against a barely modulated background with the studied conventional equilibrium of sculpture on the pediment of a Greek temple or the sacrality of objects set out on an altar.

28. Bailey’s work • Bailey picks up again tenaciously and full of faith the threads of a visual concern, of an aspect of the life of forms, that takes place over a long period of time and that runs as a current beneath the surface of contemporary art, emerging sometimes as a desire for order and formal beauty, even in contemporary expressions seemingly

29. 1972 Table with Ochre Wall

30. 1974 Migianella Still Life with Pitcher

31. 1980 Still Life Citta di Castello

32. 1985 Still Life Hotel Raphael

33. 1990 Strada Bianca

34. VIALE, 2002

35. Conclusion • Contemporary realism is a reluctant attempt to get back the spousal relation between the Truth and our represetation of it. • But the real for contemporary realists derives its importance from being an insignificant detail in the world which has an ideal form.

36. Francis Schaeffer Line of Hope: Truth = our representation of it Art Line of Desperation The Pit of Desperation: what we represent is not the Truth (maybe because there is no Truth)