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Couldn't you similarly say that realism is a one trick pony? > It does not age well. There is not a semi-infinite 'fountain' of newly interesting realism (othe

Couldn't you similarly say that realism is a one trick pony? > It does not age well. There is not a semi-infinite 'fountain' of newly interesting realism (other than your own reality). It can span the rough drawings of buffaloes (you know the ones), through the flat forms of hieroglyphics, to the impeccable fine art of Vermeer, and the architecture of Burnham, but not much more (okay maybe the spare documentarian writings of Ernest Hemingway et al.). I think in both cases, this is oddly reductive. The reality is that there is a huge continuum of different ideas from both "reality" and "surreality" and the mixture of the two, some of which have been fruitfully explored, but most of which haven't. I think maybe what you're responding to is the fundamental success of surrealism. Nobody argues any longer that the only "right" way to do art is to seek ever more verisimilitude. That's just the water we all swim in now, without needing to realize we're wet. But that's freeing, not limiting.

mikhailfranco 3y ago
I think photography dealt that blow. Surrealism was quite late to the grave-dancing ceremony, perhaps 80 years after the first photograph, so not much connection. Maybe there had to be an Impressionist interlude, with some transitional squinting at external reality, before art could become truly introspective. Surrealism was even a few decades after Freud, but hot on the heels of Cubism, other fin-de-siècle Modernisms, and roughly contemporary with stream-of-consciousness writing (Proust, Joyce, Woolf, also Kafka). [Also, the role of WWI cannot be underestimated. It cleared the landscape in many ways, destroyed old contexts (e.g. death of Futurism), launched desperate soul-searching, and was existentially challenging at every level - a long sidebar to be had there.] Culture seems rather slow to adapt to science. Interestingly, there is little traffic in the other direction, but math & physics also had their modern moments just before - Paris Math Congress 1900, Planck 1900, Einstein 1905... Perhaps sci-fi fiction prefigures future technology? But while there are a few famed prophets (H.G.Wells, W.Gibson), they are mostly hindisght/survivor bias. The genre has success in the same way that a shotgun kills a pigeon. Very little insight, lots of trajectories, few hits.
- kurthr 3y ago
  I agree and it is interesting how long it took. I've heard arguments that it was the disillusionment of WWI that really kicked it off, but I wonder how much the photographic horror of war was part of that.

mikhailfranco 3y ago

I think photography dealt that blow. Surrealism was quite late to the grave-dancing ceremony, perhaps 80 years after the first photograph, so not much connection. Maybe there had to be an Impressionist interlude, with some transitional squinting at external reality, before art could become truly introspective. Surrealism was even a few decades after Freud, but hot on the heels of Cubism, other fin-de-siècle Modernisms, and roughly contemporary with stream-of-consciousness writing (Proust, Joyce, Woolf, also Kafka). [Also, the role of WWI cannot be underestimated. It cleared the landscape in many ways, destroyed old contexts (e.g. death of Futurism), launched desperate soul-searching, and was existentially challenging at every level - a long sidebar to be had there.] Culture seems rather slow to adapt to science. Interestingly, there is little traffic in the other direction, but math & physics also had their modern moments just before - Paris Math Congress 1900, Planck 1900, Einstein 1905... Perhaps sci-fi fiction prefigures future technology? But while there are a few famed prophets (H.G.Wells, W.Gibson), they are mostly hindisght/survivor bias. The genre has success in the same way that a shotgun kills a pigeon. Very little insight, lots of trajectories, few hits.

kurthr 3y ago
I agree and it is interesting how long it took. I've heard arguments that it was the disillusionment of WWI that really kicked it off, but I wonder how much the photographic horror of war was part of that.