Realism

"Waterlilies" by Peder Mork Monsted - Oil Painting
                        
I recall, during my high school art class (美術課), the art teacher often reminded us that there was no need to make a painting that looked so real. He said that you could have otherwise simply taken a photograph.

Photography and painting can bring various kinds of strengths and weaknesses. As we know, photography is commonly considered as a realistic expression.

However, it was only until recently that I was convinced paintings could also be so realistic, true to life, or even more extraordinarily realistic than photographs.

The other day, YMC, a classmate of mine from the NTUMC1968Class, forwarded to me by e-mail some of the landscape paintings by Peder Mørk Mønsted (1859-1941), a Danish realist painter. He depicted the grandeur and monumental aspect of the landscape with a remarkable eye for detail and color.

Now I recognize that "realism" can be achieved in painting as well, as seen in Mønsted's paintings, perhaps by "suggestion" and "illusion", one of the joys of painting that the artist painters enjoy.

Quote: "Photography lacks the depth and heft, the thinking sense of touch, that painting possesses."

To me, Photography vs Painting is more like Digital Intelligence (computer) vs Biological Intelligence (human brain). The painting conveys more expressions and emotions than photograph.


Yeh Tze