However, when I was studying Gustave Courbet, I started wondering about the real meaning of “Realism”. Colloquially would be what I usually hear people said when using that term, and it concludes in the painted figure or object as being similar or identical to the palpable subject. There is the academic answer to that question, as well as the colloquial one. Which brings me to the next question: what is a realistic painting? Don’t get me wrong, I do consider classical pieces outstanding work, but I always have been in my mind that nonsense I described. Yet, these were and are considered outstanding works, and for many, very realistic.
It has always been strange to me that, for example, Renaissance masters would paint their figures as the Greeks mandated only to show us unrealistic muscular bodies. Courbet is one of the artists who proof that Greek’s idea of beauty and the ideal models is not the goal every artist should aim to nor it is unsurpassable. I chose this quote because of the inevitable irony, which is not evident until later in Winckelmann’s time. Winckelmann, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Art in Painting and Sculpture, 1755)
To become great, yes, unsurpassable if we can.” (Johann J. “Good taste, which is spreading more and more throughout the world, had itsīeginnings under a Greek sky…To take the ancients for models is our only way Gustave Courbet, The Stonebreakers, 1849, Oil on canvas, 5.4 x 8.4 ft (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed))
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