What’s Real About Realism?

I’ve recently become very interested in how reality is portrayed in art. This owes, in part, to my master study on David Hockney, whose focus on seeing in his work– highlighted by his photo collage series– has made him skeptical of art that claims to mimic the real world.

“There’s no such thing as ‘things as they are.’ In painting, you deceive the eye with all sorts of devices to make things look as they are,” says Hockney.

The British master is particularly critical of the camera as a device for displaying reality, at least when it compares to how we see with our eyes. Its chief limitation is the tiny fraction of time it captures.

“It dawned on me that this is visible [photography’s time constraints]. It is visible. The more you become aware of it, the more this is a terrible weakness. Drawings and paintings do not have this.”

As an artist who spends a large amount of time viewing the world and translating it into paintings, I too find myself increasingly skeptical of the Western view of realism as the only method in making representational art.

When we think about realism in art, specifically in portraits, achieving likeness is usually the primary focus. I know it is for me. But when I account for the fact that I’ve really only been exposed to Western concepts of realism, I can see that striving for accuracy is more of a style and less a true depiction of how one actually sees a person.

I think we’ve become so adherent to realism’s tenets that we tend to think of it as interchangeable with reality. But reality is chaotic, and realism lacks the emotion and feeling that existing promotes. (Have you ever seen a photo of yourself that you felt doesn’t really look like you? Consider that when people say they’re not photogenic, they may be criticizing a photo’s inability to match their understanding of themselves.)

Achieving likeness is a worthy skill, but to view it as one and the same with representational art is short-sided. The Western tradition of representational painting is closely tied with a photographic portrayal of reality, but that’s not a universal method for painting representationally.

For example, the 17th century Chinese scrolls that Hockney focuses on for his film, Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, tell of an emperor’s journey on a 72-foot long scroll. The art isn’t a piece of realism (this period pre-dates Western perspective being introduced in China), but it is a highly effective painting which tells a true story across a vast surface.

The scenes in the art of people and buildings aren’t accurate to the way we understand those things to appear in one-point perspective, but with so much movement conveyed in one piece, the scenes are arguably much closer to experiencing “real” life than a highly rendered piece would be.

I bring all this up not as a dig on realism, but instead to point out that making something look “real” in art is subjective and not limited to rendering in the way many of us have been taught. You may have heard me say before that striving for realism and falling short is not a failure because you can find your style in falling short. To piggyback off that idea, it may be that for your work, other elements working to convey your message are more critical than highly-detailed rendering and therefore aren’t adherent to realism as a way to display reality.   

Debating what is “real” in art is a question I have a hunch I might spend my entire career playing with, but I’m presenting to you today the seed of an idea that I think artists who have only explored painting through a Western lens should use to expand their understanding of reality as expressed in art.