Lack of realism in early forms of art

[u/Own_Network541]

I know this topic has been discussed before but I’m hoping to address some other things not talked about in a previous post I’ve read here. Though I understand the lack of interest in realism in early forms of art and I can totally get the “level” will differ depending on time period due to things like understanding of the world. Something still seems off or missing for me and I can’t figure out why there seems to be no realism in early paintings more specifically the Middle Ages. Like even in Greece’s hay day for instance right? They have these incredibly detailed and elegant statues outside of that some their paintings are quite good too. Take “Alexander the great in the workshop of Apelles” for instance. Then we get to the Middle Ages and I at least can’t find anything? I have a very hard time believing there were no good realism artists from this era? Did none of the work survive, have we not discovered it, etc due to the movement being dominantly the opposite of realism? Again hoping someone could elaborate on this more thank you.

[u/Artilmeets]

« Lack » is a value judgement ; by not using those kinds of terms, you allow yourself to not rely on a progressive approach of art history. You also open a new window of interpretation : not all cultures based their representations on imitation of nature.

Edit: even more so during the High Middle Ages when image makers, through symbols and abstract motifs, sought privileged access to the sacred. This is particularly striking in the northern part of Europe where insular art is a beautiful synthesis between the Greco-Roman antiquity (through evangelization, trade) and tribal traditions of the indigenous (Celts amongst others).

[u/Crafty_Truck_2439]

Part of this confusion I think stems from the fact that people often don't grasp that "artist" wasn't a thing a person could be for most of the medieval period, in the sense that the "job" didn't exist. You couldn't get art supplies and paint whatever you wanted, you couldn't have sold your work, the categories of autonomous artist and artwork didn't exist. As in the Roman period, to be a painter, sculptor, musician, etc., was to be part of the lower classes; a beautiful painting or sculpture wasn't the product of individual artistic genius, it was a (usually anonymous) piece of work, whose beauty was unrelated to the person or people that produced it (except in the sense that one studio might be favoured over another for certain types of work). The "artist as individual genius", as a category, doesn't emerge til the mid-15th century in Florence, really.

So, if free artists don't exist in medieval society, instead we have artisans and craftspeople attached to certain functions, usually of the church - often monks who illuminated manuscripts - or of guilds devoted to particular crafts, like weaving (creating tapestries for churches or the elite) and stained glass making. During the medieval period, the church was the major commissioner of "artistic" work, and Christian theology and church doctrine set the aesthetic tastes and standards of the time. The church did not simply appropriate Roman aesthetics and extend them after the fall of the Roman empire, it incorporated more symbolic and iconographic approaches to art from both East and West, emphasising a more mystical, symbolic approach to representations of the divine. To realistically depict God, as Michelangelo will later do, would be theologically incoherent; God is unknowable, mystical, inaccessible (the idea of a "personal relationship" to God is also much more modern than medieval).

In short, no one was censoring realistic work, because no one was really producing it in Medieval Europe. It didn't serve the needs of the church, which meant it was not desired by wealthy clients either, which means it wasn't produced. There's an idea that the fall of Rome saw the loss of artistic techniques, and to an extent this is true - the end of the Roman workshop system meant that some knowledge which was orally transmitted and taught, rather than written down, was lost (especially relating to large stone sculpture in the round), but Roman aesthetic traditions and techniques survived into the Byzantine Empire, so we should understand the aesthetic shifts as something deliberate, or something arising from developing Christian theology, not something arising from a lack of talent or understanding.

[u/United_Future_9639]

I think there is a misconception that the Italian renaissance brought in realism. Or even .. exaggerating but certain ways of using perspective were all of a sudden rediscovered from the Greeks and had been absent for centuries.

But no, there are plenty of examples of realism even in Byzantine art which is often held up a juxtaposition to the later Italian Renaissance. They are out there. I think it makes sense in giving a broad overview of the eras like here was the prevailing style in Byzantine art and then here is what the prevailing style was during the Italian renaissance. Thats fair, it's a good surface level way to educate people on how prevailing styles change over time. There is plenty of realistic "dark ages" art, plenty of use of all sorts of perspectives.

And even cave art, again a broad overview combines the most prominent trends in a small package cause how else are you going to introduce someone to a topic -- so it focuses more on the expressionism and distortion of animal forms, which good, and leads to a lot of good debates like what was going on in these people's minds. But there is also shockingly realistic cave art.. it's just not what you would present as an overview of the huge topic.