Traditional realistic art shows our three-dimensional world on its flat surface in still life, landscape, architecture, figures, domestic scenes. It handles great themes like celebrating being human, having respect for human feelings, respect for taste and dignity, love of beauty and grace, and an interest in depicting what is good and decent in our species. Certainly such art makes moral statements about society, about being horrified at war, scandalized by government corruption, encouraged by human kindness, exhilarated by beautiful scenery, enthralled by our children, and content with family life. It explores universal fears such as abandonment, loneliness, sadness, homelessness, and thoughts of heaven and hell. Realistic art uses stories from legend, literature, and the Bible as vehicles for capturing human emotion and the experiences of life. The artists echo universal sentiments, enlighten people, even change people's minds.
Additionally, realistic art has a long tradition of quality, practice, strong subject matter, and a display of beauty, grace, taste and accomplishment. Realistic artwork is based on the enduring aesthetic principles of the old masters and a time-honored interest in training, standards and excellence. Schools operating today that teach in the tradition of the old masters espouse practice, practice, practice in drawing, shading, creating light and shadow, and applying paint from techniques of the masters developed long ago. These skills are all used in effectively recreating our three-dimensional world. Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of Ginevra de'Benci may be only 23x29 inches, but is packed with exquisite details of velvet, lacing, curly hair, and delicately modeled skin, enough to make you want to reach out and touch her.
In contrast, what defines modern art? Modern art is a reaction against tradition. It champions the bizarre, the ugly, the chaotic, the insulting and the outrageous. Mostly it is interested in breaking traditions and praising anything that is new: paintings made by an elephant with a paintbrush in his trunk, crucifixes suspended upside down in jars of urine, madonnas smeared with elephant dung, plastic penises hung from strings in a doorway, or simply a urinal. Modern abstract art mocks the ideas of skill and technique like good drawing and accurate representations of our three-dimensional world, ignores traditional ideas like illusion, perspective, light and shadow, color blending to approximate skin tone, and denies the use of storytelling so integral to realistic art.
