Realism

Realism in art takes many forms. Realism is an important aspect of our senses, what we feel they mean in our minds as citizens in a world in which images proliferate as forms of both communication and expression. Realism refers to a set of conventions or representations that have historical meaning or values about people, objects and aslo events in the world througout centuries and eras. Realsitic art has one goal and that is to reproduce reality as it is. Approaches to and appreciation of realism in art have political meaning because what constitutes realism in historical, geographical, or national context can become a political issue. What we can question is what we actually see and feel from art and visual culture when pointing to certain politics of a given social context. Does it actually have political true meaning and if so what do we feel from it?

Realism is exactly what it means, realness or representing something that is real. Cubism is an abstract art style in the form of objects that are less realistic, usually shapes that are shifted around to create a style of what we are looking at in a more abstract setting. With abstract art, reproduction can occur and we can understand and make out images that we can also hold in our thoughts and memories. With coventions of representation of art and image making in both realism and cubism, they each shape and reproduce contemporary ways of seeing and give a rise to and reproduce worldviews.

Avant-garde is a term that represents particular movements in art history or artistic experimentations that depict major changes associated with modernism. An example of this is in 1932 the representational style of painting was embraced as a state policy bringing about geometric abstraction and objective abstraction for icons modernizing society and showing us what was forthcoming in the world and picturing reality.
Michael Focault used the term episteme to describe how a given era organizes knowledge to represent truth. This is a dominant mode of acquiring and organizing knowledge in a given period of history. The work of signs is a way of undersnatding a worldview of an era, for example, if we take a classical period and modern period in time, it puts things in order of organization and representation of what we view. Each period of time, according to Focault, has a different episteme.