ADVERTORIAL - An 18th Century Art Technique has Better Details Than Your IPhoneX. Do You Know What It Is?
We often come across paintings and drawings that seem impeccably real that it feels like what we’re looking at is a photograph. It simply boggles the mind of regular citizens who are untrained in Art as the cloth in the painting looks as soft as how clothes in reality are and how that water droplet in that painting just looks, well, wet. Paintings like these fall under the category Realism, a term coined by French novelist Champfleury back in the year 1850s.
Throughout the years of evolution, the original meaning for the term has changed to what we know now; a label used to describe the style of almost photographic paintings, regardless of subject matter. However, way back in the 18th Century, realism was an art movement that was created to reject Romanticism, which was another type of movement that focused primarily on the individual’s imagination and their sense and emotions.
Realist were determined to depict the existence of ordinary life alongside its occupants. In a modern context, it is akin to focusing on the lives of online influencers behind the camera when they’re not constantly updating their lavish lifestyles online.
Gustave Courbet, a French painter that led the Realism movement as well as Edward Hopper, an American Realist painter, are some of the well-known and established realist artists that we’ve come to love and appreciate in this day. Gustave Courbet made his name through his artwork A Burial at Ornans, an oil
painting that held the essence of the Realism movement. Excluding spiritual forms such as Christ and depicting the gritty reality of life after it has run its course, the artwork is, as Courbet once stated, “the burial of Romanticism”.
A Burial at Ornans
by Gustave Courbet
Evidently, you might be asking, “but what of the Realism painters that don’t date back all the way to the 18th century?” Though there are many scattered around the globe, there exists an artist from Japan that paints portraits with such fine details that the Portrait mode on your Iphone X will never be able to replicate; Osamu Obi.
Osamu Obi, a 53-year-old Realism painter, has been painting for more than 20 years. Taking inspirations from previous Realism painters like Rembrandt and Eduardo Naranjo, Osamu captures the many scenes in our daily lives and paints out the very details that tend to be oft-overlooked. He focuses more on compositions of his paintings and exposing every mark and blemish of his subjects, as opposed to using a beauty filter to hide reality.
However, words can only do as much to describe the raw art produced by Osamu. For this reason, the realist painter will be bringing his works for the first time ever to Malaysia. Located at Mont Kiara Art Gallery on the 26th of September 2019, Malaysians will be able to exclusively see for themselves the reality in which Osamu Obi sees. Are you ready to capture the reality?
Nighthawks
by Edward Hopper
On the other hand, Nighthawks, a 1942 realism painting done by Edward Hopper, is one of the most recognisable American modern masterpiece in their pop culture, with the dark coloured hues juxtaposed to the illumination by the fluorescent lamps in the diner acting as the main features of the painting.
Source: Osamu Obi
Source: Gustave-Courbet.com
Source: aeon