Hello and welcome back! For today’s blog post I wanted to talk about the different views of artists in the world, specifically in Realism and Impressionism. I am currently writing a paper in one of my classes about my personal teaching philosophy and it got me thinking about how artists have their own philosophies in a way as well. They each have their own ways of seeing and doing things so I felt like it may be a good topic for today. I wanted to focus on Realism and Impressionism because I think they have interesting views to compare. They are pretty opposite to each other so I think it will be fun to think about how they view the world.

Realism focuses on portraying everyday life with accuracy and honesty. A great artist in this movement is Gustave Courbet who rejected idealization and mostly painted workers, farmers, and average people in their everyday life. He created beautiful works that represented things and people we see everyday in great detail. They exude the realistic style and give the viewer a sneak peak into his world. I think his view is really unique because even though it looks like everyday life you can see his appreciation for it.

Impressionism on the other hand focuses more on experimentation. An example of this is Claude Monet’s work. Instead of having great realistic detail in his paintings he focused more on capturing a fleeting moment. It is more about how the scene feels than how it looks. Impressionist painters mostly worked outside to capture the changing lighting throughout the day. You are also able to see the individual brushstrokes that give the painting a sense of movement and urgency. I like thinking of this point of view because you can understand they saw something so beautiful that they just had to capture that feeling for others. I would definitely call it a favorite of mine.

These two movements and styles are so different from each other yet, they carry their own views and deep meaning together. There are so many great things about both and its fun to think about the artists point of views.

I hope you guys enjoyed todays post and thank you for joining me!

Marissa