21st Century Realism

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by Epictetus, Jun 9, 2012.

  1. Epictetus here & now Registered Senior Member

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    Could you guys help me out? What is the latest thing in art - by which I mean painting and possibly sculpture. I appreciate 20th century art and the abstract and the expressionist and all the rest - great stuff, but sort of like the pedestrian view that poetry ought to rhyme, I hold that the most talented painters are the ones who can imitate reality, for example Vermeer

    Vermeer could not work from photographs, of course, and while I can see that for a 21st Century realistic painter it would be practical enough, again in my pedestrian view, the best artist can paint from pure imagination rather than just copy a scene from reality.

    So my question is: is there any such animal as the 21st Century realist painter?
     
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  3. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Well.....there are at present far more "painters" than there ever has been before. This as artists supplies are very readily available to pretty much everyone - even online from such places as Dick Blick. Every town with a college or university has an art supply store as well. Retirees, bored housewives, handicappers, disabled persons, day care centers, alternative schools etc all have a great number of "painters". In short (to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield), these days, "Everybody's an artist!"

    However, if you are thinking more of actual professional artists, the USA has about 200,000 professional artists in various disciplines according to Professional Artist Magazine. Perhaps 1/4 of those are primarily 'painters'. Most of those 'painters' use contemporary media such as acrylics or alkyds that are not conducive to the type or realism you are referencing. This because they use those media in order to avoid the perceived shortcomings of more traditional media such as oil paints, watercolour paints and egg tempera.

    Further, the folks that actually teach art these days have a very different skill set than the traditional university-level art instructors of yesterday. How so? Well, most of them (especially in the USA) were taught by abstract expressionists. How did that work? Here is a typical scenario:

    They showed up for class. The teacher and a model were present. The teacher said "You can paint the model, or you can look out the window and paint the landscape, or you can paint whatever you feel like." While he may have given some vague technical assistance if asked for that, mostly he would just walk around the studio puffing a cigarette in a holder with his artiste's beret cocked at a jaunty angle looking artistic and cool. Occasionally he would peer closely at a student's work in progress before settling down next to the most attractive undergrad present and regaling her with stories of a long past trip to Paris for the balance of the semester.

    The students bought the canvas pre-stretched at the same art supply they bought the paint and brushes at. They put some of the paint on the canvas and got a grade. To get a grade, it was not necessary to actually know how to paint, it was only necessary to show up for class and pay the tuition bill. The persons who graduated from such a program then went on to teach as well. What is the difference?

    Well, the abstract expressionist painter instructors were taught how to "paint what they saw". They then rebelled against the dogma of realism and joined the expressionist movement, painting what they felt - "expressing their impressions in the abstract" rather than 'merely copying nature'. They then taught their students to 'paint what they felt' rather than what they saw. Their students then lacked the ability to paint what they saw, and they have passed that inability on to their students.

    My son just finished an introductory class in Fine Art in the art college at the local university. His instructor introduced herself as a "conceptualist". The only 'work of art' that she had done and shown the class was a photograph of a hole in the ceiling of her home bathroom where the drywall had been removed for some reason and the fibreglas insulation was exposed. She proudly showed the class this photograph which she had titled "Pink Clouds". She cannot draw or paint, and my son said she was actually proud of that.

    Gratefully (as far as his old dad is concerned at least) she gave class assignments that forced her students to do things that she could not - draw, sculpt and paint. I was pleased with the things he made in the class so I let it go, but I made a note.

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    If you look at 100 painters, 1 will be absolutely wonderful, 1 will really stink, and the rest will fall in between those 2. Any professional artistic painter worth his or her salt will have painted realistic scenes, still lives and portraits as part of their training. Many will continue to do the occasional realistic painting or drawing to keep their technical edge. Most all of those folks possess the ability to paint or draw a realistic picture 'from their mind's eye' rather than from a model, but the exercise is to use a model because any errors will then be obvious and can be rectified as part of the exercise.

    A very few professionals still paint strict traditional realistic pictures. They can be found in a number of venues, as can the many amateur or hobbyist realistic painters. I have seen their works so I know they are out there. Your local city or town art shows are a good place to find them.

    For a larger start, here is the Wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_painters

    Hunter was a good one for still life as I recall, and there are a bunch of others listed there as well.

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  5. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Oh yeah - and as for your first question -
    - that is a whole other kettle of fish and a vast, complex aggregate.

    I guess the first thing to do in order to answer that question would be to narrow the field a tad.

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  7. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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  8. Epictetus here & now Registered Senior Member

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    Thank you, gentlemen. Good sites and info.

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