I’m asking because paintings, whether on the wall of a cave, or on generally of a King or Queen in ancient times look quite weird. Not necessarily in a bad way, it has its own cool art style, but they are not realistic or anywhere close.
If human beings have a natural talent, photographic memory or incredible artistic ability today where they can make TikToks of painting ultra realistic art with fire, chalk or charcoal etc Why do we almost never see realism in painting/artistic history? I’m talking paintings specifically not sculptures btw
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They weren’t bad they just didn’t aim to be realistic from the start. There are several factors at play here, the first one being that the available tools and materials back then were far more limited. Brushes were not the fine tuned instruments you can easily get today, a good brush was a luxury item made by a skilled craftsman, and most artists used whatever brush they could find which was not always good. Things like pencils didn’t even exist. The mediums on which they painted on themselves were not ideal, often being stone (different kinds too) or wood, with paints that were all hard to source and made very differently and didn’t always play nice with each other or the material they were used on. Being able to layer different paints on each other back then was a feat in itself. A lot of ancient artwork has lost most of its pigments over time, but not all, pointing to how the different paints had different compositions and properties. Many of them did not survive the test of time and this is important because it tells us that a lot of art is forever lost, such as art on wood/canvas that may have existed which could have been different to the murals and pottery we’re used to seeing.
However the most important aspect is that most of the art styles found throughout history were generally deliberate, with clear guidelines as to how it should be and how it shouldn’t be, be it for religious or cultural/aesthetic reasons, they were making them in a particular way. Artists were few and far between and generally trained each other with somewhat centralised aesthetic and artistic guidelines that few ever veered away from. The majority of their works was made on demand and especially for religious uses certain styles were preferred and maintained. Once again we should mention that there’s a lot of art that probably has not survived but it’s clear even from what we do have that the aesthetic choices were very much outlined in some way seeing as how statues and murals with the same structure and cues can be found spread across vast distances, such as in ancient Egypt or Greece, with statues and murals all sharing some core aspects despite being made by multiple different artists. Even then while murals and pottery art may look rudimentary contemporary realistic sculptures show that they were not at all unaware, or incapable, of rendering realistic forms, they simply chose not to in some mediums.
Lastly while it’s a bit difficult to look up this subject matter, since Google seems to confuse any searches with the 19th century realism movement and doesn’t provide relevant information to what we’re after here, you can find a lot of artwork from Roman and early Christian times, 1st-3rd century AD, that is fairly realistic even by today’s standards. Some notable examples include the Egyptian Fayum portraits (which look very simillar to later Byzantine art), or the very well preserve Pompeii murals. It’s hard to know just how far back these types of art styles go, since tempera paint and canvas/wood don’t usually hold up well in time, but it’s a fair guess to assume that the art style went further back since what we have looks fairly refined so they weren’t just exceptions from individual artists. After that period it wouldn’t be until the rennaisance again when we would see realistic styles emerge in art since, at least in Europe and the Middle East, art was dominated by almost exclusively religious art, which again had strictly established and defined aesthetic guidelines which prioritised modesty as making very impressive or flamboyant paintings was seen as vain and not pious.
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