Realism

Examples of Realism in the following topics:

• The Rise of Realism

  • American realism attempted to portray the life of ordinary Americans at home, presenting a new artistic perspective.
  • Through artistic expression, American realism attempted to portray the cultural exuberance of the figurative American landscape and the life of ordinary Americans at home.
  • Pulling away from fantasy and focusing on the now, American realism presented a new gateway into modernism.
  • Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism, a prominent literary movement in mid-nineteenth century France and elsewhere.
  • Analyze the new focus on realism and how it manifested itself in the arts

• Literary Naturalism

  • Naturalism was a literary movement that used realism to explore the effects of heredity and social environment on human character.
  • Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from roughly 1880 to 1940 that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character.
  • Naturalism is the outgrowth of literary realism , a prominent literary movement in mid-19th-century France and elsewhere.
  • Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine the underlying forces (e.g., the environment or heredity) influencing the actions of its subjects.

• Culture in the Thirties

  • Many of the works created under WPA belonged to Social Realism - an international art movement that depicted the everyday life of ordinary people, most notably the working class and the poor.
  • Related to Social Realism was American Regionalism, which depicted rural America, both realistic and as a subject of myths and folk legends, as well as images drawn from American history.
  • Regionalism and Social Realism are sometimes described as a  rural branch and an urban branch (respectively) of American Scene Painting, although borders between the meanings of these three terms are not always clear.
  • While sometimes differences between artists and art works belonging to these movements may be blurry, the one characteristic that they all shared was realism, or focusing on depicting American life as it was.
  • The commitment to realism resulted also in the popularization of photography.

• Containment in Vietnam

  • Although it continued to aim at restraining the Soviet Union, detente was based on political realism, or thinking in terms of national interest, as opposed to crusades against communism or for democracy.

• Romanticism in America

  • Later transcendentalist writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson still show elements of its influence and imagination, as does the romantic realism of Walt Whitman.
  • By the 1880s, however, psychological and social realism were competing with Romanticism in the novel.

• American Modernism

  • The Ashcan School gathered around realism (Robert Henri or George Luks), while the Stieglitz circle glorified abstract visions of New York City (Max Weber, Abraham Walkowitz).

• Containment in Foreign Policy

  • Although it continued to aim at restraining the Soviet Union, it was based on political realism, or thinking in terms of national interest, as opposed to crusades against communism or for democracy.