Which Art Museum Has a Human Face Made With Crumpled Clothes
Caravaggio, The Doubting of Thomas, c. 1601-02, oil on canvas, 107 10 146 cm (Sanssouci Picture Gallery)
Hakuin Ekaku, Portrait of Daruma, mid-18th century, Edo menstruum Japan, hanging curl, ink on newspaper, 117.5 x 54 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Naturalism is resemblance to the "real earth," as we see it around us. The more than naturalistic a work, the more it looks like our globe, and the less naturalistic, the less so.
Representational versus non-representation
For extremes, we volition compare a work by Caravaggio with a piece of work by Hakuin Ekaku, a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk. Caravaggio's Italian Baroque The Doubting of Thomas is highly naturalistic, whereas Hakuin'southward portrait of Daruma rejects naturalism. Both paintings are representational, which ways that they both depict something, as opposed to non-representational works like Pollock's Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), where there is no visual picture hidden in the lines.
Verism
In Caravaggio'south paradigm, the confront of Thomas, who leans down to look directly at the wound in Jesus' side, is rendered in minute, realistic detail. His hairs are individually rendered, his features distinct and recognizable, his skin browned from the sunday and with dirt.
Caravaggio found his models for holy figures in the streets, and their humble conditions are carefully depicted in his paintings. All this adds up to naturalism, and maybe even to the highest caste of naturalism, referred to as verism.
Moving toward abstraction
Ekaku's portrait of Daruma, on the other hand, is recognizable as a human being face, but all the elements have all been rendered somewhat abstractly — that is, in some mode deviating from or ignoring the natural earth, simplifying or altering it for effect. Nosotros might also say that Ekaku's image is stylized — designed according to the principles of a detail style rather than being beholden to the style things look in "the existent earth."
This does not brand it less "adept" as a work of art, and as well does not mean that the artist was less skilled. Rather, it is merely a dissimilar, less naturalistic style, designed to suit unlike goals. Hither, the emphasis is not on the bully Buddhist sage's literal appearance (he died over a millennium earlier this work was made), but on his wisdom, embodied in his giant, upturned eyes and vast forehead.
Kazmir Malevich, Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack – Color Masses in the Fourth Dimension, 1915, oil on sail, 71.1 x 44.5 cm (The Museum of Mod Art)
Polykleitos, Doryphoros, c. 450-40 B.C.E., aboriginal Roman marble copy of a lost statuary original, 211 cm (Archaeological Museum, Naples)
Not-representational fine art
The farthest extent of abstraction is non-representational or not-objective art, in which the discipline is not merely abstract, but wholly absent.
This type of art, which many viewers find highly challenging, makes little or no reference to the natural world, such as Kazimir Malevich's geometric paintings such equally Painterly Realism of a Boy with a Knapsack – Color Masses in the Fourth dimension.
In such works, nosotros are in a purely formal world, with no recognizable discipline in the work only the piece of work, itself, and where the tools of visual analysis are the just points of entry into the work.
Idealization
At that place is one other way, though, that nosotros tin can speak of naturalism. Instead of contrasting it with abstraction, we can contrast it with realism.
We tin see that the Doryphoros is highly naturalistic, in that he looks very much like a living person. On the other hand, he presents his culture'south physical ideal of symmetry, youth, fitness, and, indeed, relaxation.
If we are being honest, nosotros would have to admit that while a person could look like this, rather few of us do. It is therefore highly idealized. In this sense, the work lacks realism — since, in a fashion, co-ordinate to ancient Greek views, it is too perfect.
Satsubari, The Second of the Xvi Rakan, belatedly 14th century, hanging scroll; ink, color, and gilded on silk, 115.three ten 49.3cm (Mary Griggs Shush collection)
Naturalism and realism
Let'south take some other instance — a fourteenth century Japanese painting, The Second of the Sixteen Rakan (Rakan are figures in Buddhism who protect Buddhist law and bless donors). Here the figure does non appear naturalistic, in that the work is conspicuously a painting, with a loose style and exaggeration of features.
On the other hand, the work is highly realistic, in that the creative person has presented united states with a figure that is ordinary or even slightly grotesque, rather than arcadian. He is old, wrinkled and aptitude, his earlobe hanging low (stretched out past large gold earrings) every bit a marker of his past wealth. His clothes are rumpled, his socks slipping downward. While the image is not very naturalistic, information technology is nevertheless highly realistic.
Naturalism, realism, abstraction and idealization
Disentangling naturalism from realism is tricky, and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, despite their of import differences.
Naturalism and realism might or might not appear in the aforementioned work. An image might be naturalistic and realistic, similar The Doubting of Thomas, or naturalistic and idealized, as is Doryphoros.
Alternately, a work might be abstracted and realistic, like the Second Rakan, or bathetic and arcadian, like St. John in the Lindisfarne Gospels). A diagram presents the nexus of these terms, and nosotros might plot just most every work of art in this volume somewhere within it .
Duane Hanson, Slab Man. 1974-75, vinyl resin and fiberglass, polychromed in oil (Cantor Arts Heart)
Too real?
Some works, of form, similar those by Duane Hanson, have both forms of naturalism.
His life-size sculptures of people revel in their ordinary nature, and are also startlingly lifelike — veristic — and so much so that they are frequently mistaken for real people when on display in museum exhibitions.
I accept been fooled by 2 of them, over the years. 1 was dressed as a museum guard and another as a workman. Even though I had seen Slab Human being dozens of times, when his gallery was under construction and he was surrounded by carts of equipment and tools, I was fooled anew.
Cite this page as: Dr. Asa Simon Mittman, "Naturalism, realism, abstraction and idealization," in Smarthistory, July 11, 2019, accessed May 4, 2022, https://smarthistory.org/naturalism/.
Source: https://smarthistory.org/naturalism/
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