The realism was one of the first movement to break with the Traditional Painting in Art History. Influenced by the Romanticism, which has experienced shapes, forms, colors, and themes that weren’t canons in Neo-Classic movement taught in the Art Academies, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Jean-Françoise Millet (1814-1875), among others, aimed to expose the scourge of the new society arise with the Industrial Revolution.
Inspired by the remaining ideas of the Illuminism that preached equality among men, and also by the French Revolution, these artists traveled around France and had to opportunity to face the reality of the lower classes. Peasants, the recent industrial workforce, the prostitutes, were suddenly the theme of their paintings.
Using a perfect traditional depicting technique, the Realists Artists subverted the Classic Paiting, where themes were imposed by the Academy. Only Historical figures or facts and religious themes were permitted by the Royal Art Academy. That institution was also responsible for the Salón, the State Patronized Exhibition, and the first Realism Artworks were forbidden to be displayed.
They represented the inequality between the bourgeoisie and the poorer, people with ordinary life, brothel workers depicted as royalty. Courbet’s The Origin of the World (1866) was censored, because the artist used the political message by depicting a woman’s vagina. Even Manet’s Olympia (1853) was criticized because a well-known prostitute was painted as a greek goodness.
The Idealization in Classical Painting was also challenged in their paintings. No Greco-Roman scenery behind their characters, but things we could find their actual world. Carravagio also used average people in his paintings, but their semblance was idealized as well. The Realists tried to show the real and problematic world, and their ideas were an inspiration to many other modernist movements and even contemporary ones.
