The Perspective of realism

When I teach my humanities class, I use really streamlined definitions of realism, stylistic, and abstract: realism is close to nature proportion-wise (I use one of George Stubb's horses, Whistlejacket, as an example), stylistic is "we can still tell it's a human, but it's somewhat out of proportion (Marc Chagall for this) and abstract is the essence of human, horse, etc. (Picasso). Some of the Greek sculpture is idealized or hyper-realistic, and the text book we use questions if Michelangelo's David is really an abstract sculpture, because it violates phi in its proportions--David would be monstrous (arms too long, hands too big, etc.) if he were to get down off his pedestal and walk the streets, yet the brilliance of the sculpture is that it looks normal.



When I was researching the history of perspective and looking for examples of the first Renaissance paintings to actually use perspective, I got a different result than what Practices of Looking claims. First there are the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the Fayum mummy caskets of Roman Egypt that portray humans fairly accurately in three dimensions (much better than Giotto, who was really, really close to depicting 3 dimensions on 2 dimensional space)--one and two point perspective were still a little bit off in the landscapes I've seen. Practices of Looking mentions Brunellschi, but not Masolino, and I've seen claims that his St. Peter Healing the Cripple predates Brunellschi for demonstrating one point perspective.



I wrote a poem on Simone Martini's The Annunciation--it was in response to a poem written by Eva Chruscial, who got her Ph. D. here.



My students really struggle with abstract paintings, and I confess I do too (maybe not in the same degree though)--because I know how difficult it is to draw a hand, I really appreciate the skill it takes (I will be absolutely captivated by textures like mink in a painting). But you can change--I was never a big fan of the Impressionists, but I really like Impressionist paintings by American Frank Benson and Dane Pieter Kroyer (a poster of one of his paintings hangs over my desk as I type this--a remarkably peaceful painting of a woman in pink, reading in a lounge chair with a dog at her feet and a huge rose bush covered with white blossoms in the foreground.) Okay, so maybe its the French Impressionists, who have all the fame, I really don't care for. Jackson Pollack is useful for demonstrating that art needs to be INTENTIONAL and even though they may have painting dropclothes that rival a Pollack painting, they didn't put the splotches there on purpose. I've also discovered that if students look long enough at a Pollack painting, some of them start to see faces.....Hm.



I thought it interesting that the authors used Who Framed Roger Rabbit and A Night at the Museum as examples for their blend of real actors and animated characters. Did these authors never hear of Gene Kelly's famous dance with Jerry Mouse in the 1945 Anchors Away! ? This concept is nothing new, but by dating the use of this technique to 1988 and 2006, they make it seem like it is fairly recent.