Throughout history, people have found one way after another of communicating their thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, and the entire range of their shared experiences of living. When it comes to the visual arts, modernists like to say, “Why waste your time doing realism? It’s all been done already.” That would be exactly like saying, “Why waste your time writing anything? It’s all already been written. There is nothing left to say.”
Realism has been denigrated repeatedly for being no more than illustration, as if illustration was a dirty word. Would anyone say that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is just illustration? After all, it does illustrate the Bible. In truth, illustration is just another word for storytelling.
Would we reject written language because it tells a story? Of course not. But we all recognize that there are good stories and bad stories, some well written or poorly written, eloquent or verbose. So too are
Article source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/652637-why-realism-part-3-how-realism-became-a-dirty-word/