Realism

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Realism

• Chapter 24-4

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Characteristics of Realism

• Belief that Literature and Art should depict life
  as it really was
• Something of a reaction to the failed revolutions
  of 1848-49 and loss of idealism
• RememberRomanticism was highly idealistic

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Realism in Literature

• France Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
• The Human Comedy depicts urban society as
  grasping, amoral, brutal (characterized by
  Darwinian struggle for wealth and power
• Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
• Madame Bovary portrays the provincial middle
  class as petty, smug, hypocritical

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Realism in literature France continued

• Emile Zola (1840-1902)
• Germinal showed the hard life of young miners
  in southern France
• Portrayed the seemy, animalistic view of
  working-class life

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Realism in Literature England

• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 1819-1880
• Examined the ways that people are shaped by their
  class as well as their inner strivings,
  conflicts, moral choices
• Tomas Hardy (1840-1928)
• Tess of the dUrbervilles Portrayed a woman who
  was ostracized for having premarital sex

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Realism in Literature Russia

• Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
• The greatest Russian Realist
• Fatalistic view of history BUT regarded love,
  trust, family ties as lifes enduring values
• War and Peace Story of Russian Society during
  the Napoleonic Wars

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Realism in Literature Scandinavia

• Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
• Father of Modern Drama
• His plays examined the conditions of life and
  issues of moralityoften at odds with the
  Victorian views of the day

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Realism in Art

• The most important artists of the 19th and 20th
  centuries created art for arts sake
• This includes the Romantic Period
• Did not rely on patrons but sold their work to
  the public
• Remember Renaissance and Baroque did depend on
  patrons Church, nobility

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Realism in Art continued

• France was still the center of the art world
• Artists sent their work to the Paris Salon to be
  judged by a distinguished panel
• Realists did not idealize life portrayed life as
  it really was
• Ordinary folk became the subjects of many
  paintings
• Sometimes work rejected by the Salon because it
  was too mundane

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Gustave Courbet coined the term, realism The
Stone Breakers
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Francios Millet The Gleaners
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Honore Daumier Third Class Carriage
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Edgar Degas Laundry Girls Ironing
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Edouard Manet

• Considered the first modernist painter
• Bridged realism to impressionism
• Portrayal of female nudes was shocking!
• Luncheon on the Grass park setting. Female
  nude and two clothed males
• Olympia casual nude portrayal of a prosttitute

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Manet
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Manet
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