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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Ancient Rome had some very ultra realistic statues and bust of emperors carved from granite and marble.
Obligatory Fayum portrait mention. https://www.wikiart.org/en/fayum-portrait
So while it would be possible it wasn’t the popular style during those eras.
Strange how everyone mentions technical stuff like reference and preservation yet i think the main reason was noone had the free time/security to do so ?
Most people doing this are kids during their free time, and the good stuff you see are extremely talented/driven out of thousands. People had to do “useful stuff” at time.
Also their was a lot less people so less raw number of “geniuses”.
Photorealism was never the intent of art.
Art -drawings and paintings – was supposed to tell a story: who people were, what they did, what happened. What they looked like wasn’t really important. This is why you find paintings and drawings of people, not still life, from a long long time ago. When most people couldn’t read, a painting or a drawing was probably the best way of telling many people far away and in the future what they needed to know.
Even once technique evolved, for example, portraits were only for famous people, and you usually got whole body portraits. It was only with the advent of cameras, and their limited field of view, that the idea of a painting of just a head and shoulders of someone became commonplace.
Historically, art told a story, not described a person’s looks. The poses they took, the things they held in their hands, the clothes they wore, were all signifiers of who they were and what they did. Halos around people’s heads didn’t mean they were saints – it just meant they had died. A group of people important enough to have a painting made of them would mix the living and the dead. A halo just told the viewer who was dead as opposed to who was alive when the painting was made.
But of course, the only people Worth including in an artist’s time and effort were important people, and historically many of them became saints, which is why halos became associated with saints.
Realism in art wasn’t important. It likely never occurred to make things any other way to many artists and viewers, in general.
Mostly style.
Art during the ancient times required lots of skill, resources and reserved for important people and events. The ancient cultures studied the human form and other subjects to produce realistic art but it was mostly reserved for statues because of the above mentioned. If they can manage with other mediums, they could definitely draw realistically.
The Renaissance era brought interest in humanism making it the focal point of art.
Patrons (the people paying to have the pictures done) don’t want **realism**, they want **to look good.**
Sort of like a medieval photoshop, if you like.
Everyone here is overlooking the simple fact that we now have photography.
Realism artists don’t have photographic memories, their cameras do. They can take a photo of a model and then work on their art for as long as it takes in their studio.
It’s not a natural talent either, it takes a lot of time, practice, hard work and good tools. None of which ancient people could invest in.
Grog the caveman wouldn’t be able to convince Frugg to pose without moving for 3 months while he painstakingly painted their likeness onto the cave wall with a stick and some tree sap. Frugg needs to go hunting.
Depends specifically what pictures you refer to.
But the common “Medieval artwork” people are usually talking about are like those battlefield pictures where there’s no sense of perspective, its all laid out flat, and there’s no lighting or shading.
That was actually just a popular art style at the time. They were completely capable of Renaissance era painting, because there is examples of it. But the flat style was popular.
Its like how minimalist/modern art is popular now, but, you know, has the appearance of looking unskilled and lazy. Obviously, there’s still people who draw ultra detailed art, but that’s not what art galleries want.
I’ve heard some greek paintings of grapes were so realistic that horses tried to eat them.
I imagine a lot of it came down to the style of the times and what the norm was.
Well today we have conveniences such as water colors and oil based paints, along with photographs to use as reference rather than someone sitting semi still for several hours. Basically the more the reference moves the more the final result can shift, and with still frame photographs of the modern era we dont have that issue.
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