Realism

Realism

An attempt to make art and literature resemble life. Realist painters and writers take their subjects from the world around them (instead of from idealized subjects, such as figures in mythology or folklore) and try to represent them in a lifelike manner.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition

Aristotle [384-322 BC], The Poetics (again)

art is mimesis: imitation, from which we get the words “imitation,” “mime,” etc.

The source of the idea that art functions as a mirror held up to life.

But it will be the middle of the 19th century before “realism” becomes a dominant art form

J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm (1842)

Gustave Courbet, The Stone Breakers (1849)

Stephen Crane, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)

The Invention of Theatrical Realism: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

“The illusion I wished to create was that of reality.”

A Doll’s House (1879): A wife walks out on her husband

Ghosts (1881): The main character goes mad as the result of syphilis

An Enemy of the People (1882): Explores political corruption

Hedda Gabler (1890): The title character smokes on stage

Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman

“How can they whip cheese?”—Willy Loman

Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman

A StudebakerDeath of a Salesman Death of a Salesman

Studebaker Avanti

Death of a Salesman Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman and

Tragedy

Death of a Salesman and the American Dream

Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1960)

“When we pick up our newspaper at breakfast, we expect, we even demand that it bring us momentous events since the night before. We turn on our car radio as we drive to work and expect "news" to have occurred since the morning paper went to press. Returning in the evening, we expect our house not only to shelter us, to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but to relax us, to dignify us, to encompass us with soft music and interesting hobbies, to be a playground, a theater, and a bar. We expect our two week vacation to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless. We expect a faraway atmosphere if we go to a nearby place; and we expect everything to be relaxing, sanitary, and Americanized if we go to a faraway place. We expect new heroes every month, a new literary masterpiece every week, a rare sensation every night. . . .

Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

“We expect everything and anything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. . . . We expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly . . . to revere God and to be God.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people been more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could possibly offer.”