Realism

I have a whole mega rant, a power rant, about what's taking place there.

But let's go to this essay by Boris Groys called, what's it called, New Realism? Yes.

Okay, so this is called On Realism, Chapter 7.

It's only a few pages long.

In the context of art, the word

Why does strict fidelity work here when it would've completely ruined Forrest Gump?

What's fascinating here is that the genre of Mystic River demands absolute realism.

Realism, okay.

Yeah.

It's a tragedy rooted in a very specific, inescapable working class Boston neighborhood.

Welcome to Who's Afraid of Realism? A close reading series from the London Review of Books.

I'm joined today by the brilliant novelist and critic, Adam Thirlwell, and we're gonna be discussing a novel called Shyness and Dignity by the Norwegian writer, Dag Solstad.

Adam, welcome.

This is things as they really are.

That, I fancy, is the only true origin of realism.

Realism is simply romanticism that has lost its reason.

This is so, not merely in the sense of insanity, but of suicide.

It has lost its reason, that is, its reason for existing.

Christianity, with its gargoyles and grotesques, really amounted to saying this, that a donkey could go before all the horses of the world when it was really going to the temple.

Romance means a holy donkey going to the temple.

Realism means a lost donkey going nowhere.

A painter should depict only what he can see with his own eyes.

This attitude soon acquired a name, Realism, and Courbet became its best-known representative because he stood up for it more loudly and more consistently than anyone else.

Two later events show just how consistently he lived by this principle.

In 1855, the World's Fair was held in Paris, with a major art exhibition whose jury rejected his huge new painting, The Painter's Studio.

Courbet responded by having a pavilion built at his own expense right next to the exhibition grounds, where he himself exhibited 40 of his works.

Above the entrance, one word, "Realism." And when, in 1870, Emperor Napoleon III wanted to award him the Cross of the Legion of Honor, France's highest decoration, Courbet declined.

He did not wish to be honored by any state.

He obeyed no jury, no academy, and no emperor, and he was proud of it.