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Read Chapter 4. Describe one of the stylistic periods or movements (p.115-p.124) and its significance. I want at least 1 example included of your chosen stylistic period/movement in your initial post. Your initial post must be a minimum of 50 words.

ANSWER

Realism Movement

The realism movement in visual arts was considered as a style that depicted the actuality of what a person can see. The realism movement began in the 1850s and discarded the other traditional styles such as Romanticism and Neoclassicism. Considerably, the realist artist portrays subjects in the most straightforward manner without having to idealize them. Realism was acknowledged as the first modern movement in art that rejected the traditional forms of literature, art as well as a social organization in the wake of the industrial revolution and enlightenment. The stylistic ideas and components behind realism were utilized by many American artists to offer a naturalistic detail throughout. Gustave Courbet is considered as the beginner of the realism movement where he began showing laborers and peasants on a grand scale for historical, religious, and allegorical subjects.

The realist painters worked under a chaotic era that was marked by social change and revolution. Realism replaced the idealistic literary and image conceits of traditional art with real-life events.  Ideally, their thought to connect daily life with their canvases was a desire to merge life and art. The realism movement concentrated on arts that are naturalistic which means that they correspond to nature. This means that works that were created in the realism period were naturalistic in appearance.

Realism connected itself with how life was organized economically, socially, culturally, and politically. The main objective of realism was to portray typical people, real-life as well as situations and problems as truthfully and accurately as it can be. It depicts familiar places, people, and stories about the lower, upper, and middle class of the society. Realism focuses on telling a story as truthfully as possible rather than romanticizing and dramatizing it.  For instance, the works of Gustave Courbet expressed the realities of the rural poor in the mid-nineteenth century in France. Therefore, realism was used to frequently reflect the interests and lives of the rural and urban highlighting their oppressive conditions as well as the unique cultural characteristics as well as certain social issues.