Realism

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Realism
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Realism An attempt to make art and literature
resemble life. Realist painters and writers take
their subjects from the world around them
(instead of from idealized subjects, such as
figures in mythology or folklore) and try to
represent them in a lifelike manner. The
American Heritage New Dictionary of Cultural
Literacy, Third Edition
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• Aristotle 384-322 BC, The Poetics (again)
• art is mimesis imitation, from which we get the
  words imitation, mime, etc.
• The source of the idea that art functions as a
  mirror held up to life.
• But it will be the middle of the 19th century
  before realism becomes a dominant art form

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J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm (1842)
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Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers (1849)
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Stephen Crane, Maggie A Girl of the Streets
(1893)
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The Invention of Theatrical Realism Henrik Ibsen
(1828-1906)
The illusion I wished to create was that of
reality.
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A Dolls House (1879) A wife walks out on her
husband Ghosts (1881) The main character goes
mad as the result of syphilis An Enemy of the
People (1882) Explores political
corruption Hedda Gabler (1890) The title
character smokes on stage
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Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller
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Death of a Salesman and Realism
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Death of a Salesman and Realism
How can they whip cheese?Willy Loman
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Death of a Salesman and Realism
A Studebaker
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Studebaker Avanti
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Death of a Salesman and Realism
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Death of a Salesman and Tragedy
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Death of a Salesman and the American Dream
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Daniel Boorstin, The Image A Guide to
Pseudo-Events in America (1960) When we pick up
our newspaper at breakfast, we expect, we even
demand that it bring us momentous events since
the night before. We turn on our car radio as we
drive to work and expect "news" to have occurred
since the morning paper went to press. Returning
in the evening, we expect our house not only to
shelter us, to keep us warm in the winter and
cool in the summer, but to relax us, to dignify
us, to encompass us with soft music and
interesting hobbies, to be a playground, a
theater, and a bar. We expect our two week
vacation to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and
effortless. We expect a faraway atmosphere if we
go to a nearby place and we expect everything to
be relaxing, sanitary, and Americanized if we go
to a faraway place. We expect new heroes every
month, a new literary masterpiece every week, a
rare sensation every night. . . .
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Daniel Boorstin, The Image A Guide to
Pseudo-Events in America We expect everything
and anything. We expect the contradictory and the
impossible. We expect compact cars which are
spacious luxurious cars which are economical. .
. . We expect to eat and stay thin, to be
constantly on the move and ever more neighborly .
. . to revere God and to be God. Never have
people been more the masters of their
environment. Yet never has a people been more
deceived and disappointed. For never has a people
expected so much more than the world could
possibly offer.