"Realism" and Video Games
I believe it was my first year at university that I found myself, for the first time, rethinking the word “realistic.” It was during an introductory art history course, and the teacher (a graduate student) was presenting some of the artwork from the Renaissance. When compared to the medieval art we were previously shown, the most obvious point of comparison would be its “realism”; this was an opinion shared by most of the class. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights , c. 1490-1510 Raphael, School of Athens , 1509-1511 Clearly, Rafael’s fresco bears more resemblance to the “reality” we experience, especially when juxtaposed with the flat, surreal figures that populate Bosch’s painting. Or at least, this was what I thought before the teacher pushed back against it. Does Rafael’s painting, the teacher asked, truly capture the actual experience of reality? Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol , 1875 J. M. W. Turner, The Slave Ship , 1840 Being a vis...