Re: realistic art

Richard Spear (rspear@PRIMENET.COM)
Mon, 31 Jul 1995 17:02:18 -0800

Maureen - thanks very much for your explanation of artistic realism.
My interest is less on how successfully an artist has achieved a
realistic presentation than what the choice of subject was. If a
neoevolutionary sequence of cultural development can be described
that moves from band to tribe etc., etc., and a schema that places
ideology in the superstructure of that culture is true, then the art,
as part of that ideological superstructure, should reflect the
underlying technological and social arrangements extant at any given
stage. it seems that artistic representations should reflect these
developments.

You have pointed out a significant experimental problem in
interpretation of the art. There's also a problem in interpreting the
stages. Have you any references to the Alexandrian period and the
transition to depiction of individuated faces in Greece?

Richard